With the inflation of gas, food and well, almost everything to that, parents are (gasp) considering cutting back some of the fine luxuries in life, and (more gasp) this includes trimming the gaming bills a bit. But to those gamers who are not bothered by the flaming influx of the economy (or just would not face reality), here are some figures worth looking at.

It stinks that the Qore’s (the “highly interactive” online magazine for Sony) annual subscription ($24.99 a year) for some folks would most probably come to a halt, but it stinks a lot more for the gaming companies out there, if ever the millions of customers suddenly start tightening the belt.

Looking at it in a hypothetical manner, if there are around 9.8 million registered to the PlayStation Network, and if roughly 5 million are subscribed to Qore, then with this online mag alone, Qore is earning a whopping $124,950,000!So yeah, mass consumption is something to look at, if you’re a budding entrepreneur, you better think like the execs, sell something totally digital that uses almost no resource at all (only electricity and hardware) in your part, and you’re all set (no worries with the college tuition fee of the kids). And to make matters more interesting, Europeans (as of the moment) still do not have access to Qore, and there are a number of gamers whom are actually MAD because this (slightly expensive) commodity is not available to their country yet. Well sure, a two week (to a month) advance with the beta testing is great, but is it really worth it?

Now let’s get to the Xbox Live subscriptions, which charge a certain fee when you go from silver to gold. Although the fees are not that high, again a normal $49.99 a year bill, it does somehow raise some eyebrows when you think about it. Why would you need to pay for “reputation rating which is voted on by other players who decide to either prefer or avoid another player” or achievement points, or even the “Xbox Guide”? Shouldn’t those come along free, once you purchase the expensive console? Microsoft has announced that they have passed the 12 million members paying for the gold membership (of $49.99/year). So if there are 12 mil people subscribed to Xbox Live (gold), then it means that Microsoft is earning $599,880,000, which is almost enough to keep the US Government from asking money again from the UN.

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