Same quality? That's highly debatable, and most would argue that MS's service far outshine's Sony's.
All you're doing is making an excuse as to why Sony's service isn't as good. Downloads are slow, servers go down, etc.. oh, must be because it's free.
Time to join the real world, pal. Does Jordan refund money for GTP's downtime to the Premium members? No. Does the phone company refund money for downtime if a truck hits a telephone pole? No.
I had a website a while back, had my own dot-com and everything. Only if there was an extended outage of more than a day would the company refund any of my money.
I just did the math.. assuming that the XBL servers were down for five hours, that equates to less than three cents in "usage". Do you really expect them to refund that three cents to all XBL users? Or give them all ONE MS Point to spend online?
No XBL user is going to complain about some downtime here and there, just because they're paying for it. In the real world, paying for something does not automatically imply 100% uptime.
You should also bear in mind that the majority of XBL users have Silver accounts, aka "free". Myself included. I can download anything I want without paying a dime. I have little interest in playing games against a bunch of twelve-year-olds who want to tell me how "pwned" I am all the time.
Downloadable games? Those don't pay the server fees, that money goes back to the developer/publisher who released the game/upgrade/content, not to Microsoft.
Think these things through, bub.. nothing is as simple as you like to pretend it is.
If my phone company drops service, I sure do get money back. Often. Especially with Cell phone and cable services.
You do not own a PS3, so I have no idea how you are comparing the service without having used both. I spoke only about the quality of gameplay service. When I log on to CoD3, FNR3, or even Madden, the quality of the online experience is the SAME as XBL. The only edge XBL has is it's features, and that is on the firmware, not the service. Given that it's firmware, the PS3 has (and right now is scheduled to update in march) plenty of time to catch up. I don't mind waiting, since it's free for everything.
Also, MS does reap benefits off the XBLA games. They don't just provide the service to developers for free. These costs, given the amount of XBL users and wide variety of games and content, go to MS in portions, and it is MORE than enough for them to pay for the server maintanence. They could pay someone 100K a year, a team of 10 people, and STILL have a TON of money left over for new servers, parts, and bills. I'd say that MS banks about 15-25 percent of the XBLA costs. No one knows for sure, but even at 15% they're making a KILLING.
Also, the quality of the XBLA games is dwarfed in comparison to the PS3 downloadable titles. And the PS3 titles are CHEAPER. Most titles on the PS3 download service range from $2.99 to $7.99.
On top of that, they aren't capped to 50MB and limited to classic arcade titles and ported 2D games. I just downloaded Tekken 5: Dark Ressurection, and it was only $15. 850MB downloaded in 30 minutes. Not bad for a free service right?
Point is, XBL is *not* worth $50 a year when competitors are offering the same quality of service, and catching up in features.