XBOX 360 RULES!!!!
Too bad mine just died over the holidays so I couldn't play Left 4 Dead and I couldn't play it for the six days I just had off. Talk about one pisssed off customer...the thing had to die on my vacation time.
Other than that, yes, you have to pay for Xbox online. You get so much more than playing online for it though. Free demos, free news, previews, reviews, news, events, etc. It's crazy what is available for the 360, plus now we have Netflix. That is one sweet deal!
I'm just sad that as all this new stuff is being released we will soon see the Xbox 720...Microsoft already has a patent on the name. We will probably hear more talk about it in 2009, a preview of some hardware/console in 2010 and a release in either 2011 or 2012.