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The recent $10 price hike in the yearly gold membership plan for Xbox Live might be too much of money for some people. However it isn’t too much for the Microsoft. For all that’s good, they are planning on launching a ‘Platinum’ service very soon. The platinum service will be dearer by $40 and will cost you $100 for the yearly plan. For the $40 extra you might get some special armor or map packs, but nothing big really.

By increasing the price of Xbox Live Gold membership plan, Microsoft was able to raise $100-150 million from their 10-14 million Xbox Live Gold members. Michael Pachter, the guy that predicted the $10 price hike around a year ago said that the software giant would invest that money in improving their Xbox Live service. “I think that they will reinvest at least this much in developing other new applications, and will roll out a premium service with $100 – 200 million worth of enhancements,” Pachter told IndustryGamers. Microsoft hopes that 2 million users will switch from the $60 plan to the $100 plan and raise $80 million a year in the process.