Entry 38: "360 Degrees of $eparation"

Yo!

Readers, I'm pleased to announce I have joined the next-gen gaming community, by picking up an Xbox 360. So far, Gears of War is the only game I have right now, but I'm working on grabbing a couple more by the end of Spring, depending on if I can budget them in by then. Lately, though, I'm hearing a lot of controversy surrounding the emergence of what are now known as "microtransactions;" extra content purchaseable from Microsoft's Xbox Marketplace used to add content to your games, like weapons, characters, stages, maps, etc. for what amounts to a cell phone game's cost on average, but paid for in a new currency called Microsoft Points.

Most of the time, the catalog of content, item-by-item is only worth anywhere from about a buck to almost ten dollars, but considering Microsoft's recently announced plans to put out special cheats and video walkthroughs (the latter is already up and running as I type) for games at a cost, it leads one to believe the future of console gaming is paying for a single game twice over. Between the game itself and the gotta-have maps, characters, system themes, profile icons, cars, teams, and now cheat codes....... and the fact that Nintendo and Sony are doing the same thing with their respective WiiStores and PlayStation Networks...... That's not a very pretty penny you're dealing with there. In fact, that's probably the not-that-unattractive- per-sé-but-just-cute-enough-for-your-wingman-roommate-to-party-with-for-a-
couple-hours-while-you-hook-up-with-the-hotter-and-younger-sister penny. Thank goodness those downloads aren't required as part of these already expensive games. ..........Yet.

In fact, the Points themselves are also quite controversial, since people are now realizing Microsoft only put them out like that to disguise the true value of the content in real money. To use my good buddy Mr. Wikipedia's example, a song on Microsoft's Zune Marketplace costs 79 Points. Realistically, that 79 Points in fact does equal iTunes' per-song charge of 99 cents anyway. I guess MS made those points hoping people wouldn't catch on to that scheme to trick people out of more money by putting a deceptive price tag on it, instead of simply charging the real money to a real credit card just like everyone else. At least until public knowledge of the logic behind the scheme begins to get known on the web a little more thanks to, say, some teenager's weekly blog of some kind. Whoops.

The Bottom Line... Oh, God, I hope they don't implement the pay-per-cheat system on Xbox 360. I know Microsoft's kinda trying to make up for the original Xbox's lackluster lifetime sales and expensive (for them) recent, free repairs of the year-one 360s that were always malfunctioning last year. But at least I know I can restrain myself from ponying up for that and turn the game off. Sorry, Microsoft.....

.....But that's just me.

See ya next week.

-D.