In an interview with 1up.com at last weeks DICE event, Shane Kim discussed some details about the porting of Xbox Live services over the PC, specifically Vista enabled PC’s. When creating an online service on the original Xbox there was no competition and as such Microsoft could ‘get away’ with charging fees for the service.

Now that the system will be coming the PC Microsoft have a problem; there is competition, and lots of it. Services such as Gamespy and Xfire have long and successful histories on the PC and not only that they offer their services for free. So how are Microsoft going to handle such obstructions? Microsoft Games Studios Corporate Vice President, Shane Kim attempts to answer:

"Not all customers have to pay for Xbox Live on Xbox 360 [Silver and Gold], in the same way you're going to have a similar approach when we bring Live over to Windows. Those details are going to be announced pretty shortly.

We have big value offering to customers because we can create an integrated Live experience across platforms. We do recognize that, unlike the Xbox 360 environment, there's existing competition in the PC online space. So we have to take that into account as we think about how we're going to structure our services, what they'll pay for and what they won't."

1up speculate that this could mean basic online gaming functionality could be free for PC users, but as with the Xbox Live service, premium features will be reserved for those with Gold Accounts.

"Theoretically speaking, that's exactly the kind of thing we'd want to do. In the Xbox world when we created Xbox Live, there was no other option. We're sort of creating it as we go, we established that model and that framework. As we come into the Windows gaming world, there are alternatives that are out there so we have to be cognizant of that,"

There is no doubt that Microsoft will have to be careful when making decisions of this nature, after all they don’t want to alienate Xbox users who have to pay for certain functionality if they are going to go ahead and give it away free to PC users just because there is tough competition for that format.

Perhaps they will begin to take the no fees route with the 360 if Sony and Nintendo’s online services start to take off in the future?