Hmm, I take these "extra" features being the you need gold live account to play MP or start a game in MP.

Ok it does suck, but seriously people need to lighten up about it. Seriously Live uses the internet, you have to pay for that dont you? ok it sucks you need to add more money to it to get an account, but internet costs are going down all the time/speeds going up. You need to look at it from a different perspective.