Twitter and Facebook on 360 will require Gold account (meaning youre paying 50 bucks for them on 360)

by **Event Status** Thu Aug 27, 2009 5:00 pm

When Microsoft finally rolls out Twitter and Facebook integration on the Xbox 360, the services will only be available to those with an Xbox Live Gold subscription.

While the big news to come out of Microsoft is the Xbox 360 price drop, the company also revealed some information about the upcoming integration of Twitter and Facebook on Xbox Live. According to MS, both features will only be available to those with a Gold subscription.

Buried deep in the press release about the 360 price drop was this little nugget of info: "Xbox Live Gold Membership will be required for Twitter and Facebook when they are available, and is required for Netflix. Games, media content and Netflix membership are sold separately; a hard drive is required for storage." The same will be true for both Last.FM and Live Party when those services are released.

It's a bit of a curious decision to require users to pay a subscription fee to access features that are normally free, but it does add yet another feature that could entice users to go for the Gold, so to speak. As for when we can expect to poke our friends via an Xbox, the update still has the vague release window of "this fall."

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/08/twitter-and-facebook-on-360-will-require-gold-account.ars