Once online play on Xbox Live goes free, it only makes sense to maintain parity on the PC side and extend the same benefits to Games for Windows Live customers. In fact, that's what it should have been to begin with. GfWL should have launched as a completely free service from day one for a number of reasons. For one, PC gamers don't normally pay for online gaming anyway, so charging for it over Xbox Live doomed the brand right away and labeled Microsoft as a even more of a money whore in the eyes of PC gamers than before. Also, even if Microsoft eventually wanted to make money from premium add-ons, the service should have been free at least for an initial "introductory" period of, say, a year or so.
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Microsoft's big trump card in terms of competing with Nintendo and especially Sony is Xbox Live. In 2008, in order to combat Sony's recently improving luck, Microsoft will have to make some drastic improvements to their online service, so as to remind people that they still have something special that nobody else has.
The two basic ways of accomplishing this are introducing a host of massive improvements and making online play free. The latter really needs to happen this year, and not even primarily because Sony lets their gamers play for free.
No, the real reason why online gaming on Xbox Live needs to become gratis is the one segment of the gaming populace that Microsoft still doesn't seem to be able to snag: the casuals. The thing with online gaming is that it has become completely commoditized. Even simple little flash games offer leaderboards, gamer profiles, and sometimes actual online play. Then you have even more fleshed out online efforts like EA's Battlefield Heroes. Most (non-MMO) PC games have had free online multiplayer components for years. And, of course, both Sony and Nintendo allow free online play on both their home consoles and portables.
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