The Live Arcade is a feature of the Xbox that I'm interested in. Can anyone tell me whether you can simply purchase the games you are interested in and then play them offline, or do you need to be online (pay the subscription fee) in order to play your downloaded games?

Thanks.

not sure.

note: I'm a 71 year old man that knows nothing about Xbox. I'm just padding my posts.

You can play them offline and you don't have to have an Xbox Live Gold account to buy them either. Just to play multiplayer. You can use the free Xbox Live Silver account to buy and play them if multiplayer doesn't concern you.

Thanks