Trouble at the Market

I've been using the Xbox LIVE services pretty much since the Xbox 360 LIVE services became available in the UK. It started off really well, go online, join or host a game. Hopefully meet new people, have a good laugh at the same time and get your moneys worth out of whatever game that's being played. However, a few little niggly peeves have started to creep into the Xbox LIVE system.

The first being the announcement and (on a very tiny scale so far) the introduction of "renewable downloadable content" from the Marketplace. What this means is nothing good for the Xbox LIVE customer. Putting it more simply, if you purchase an item for in-game use, say a sword for your RPG character, should that sword degrade and break according to the games rules then that sword will have to be downloaded again from the LIVE Marketplace. "Yeah, and...?" I hear you cry. Well, everytime you download that sword, or whatever item it may be, you will have to pay for that sword or said item with new Microsoft Points, meaning you'll need to spend more cash to get those Microsoft Points. Since this announcement, not from Bill Gates I believe, the subject has gone very quiet at Microsofts end. However, there is an item (possibly more), horse armour I think it is, already available as "renewable downloadable content". The first item of many?

Second is the recent introduction of region coded discs. What this means is that if you live in a European country and purchase a region coded disc you can only play other European players in online matches. Ranked or player, private or public, co-op or adversial, it doesn't matter. A European coded disc game will not allow you to play American region coded disc gamers and American region coded disc games won't allow American players to play Japanese region coded disc gamers and so forth. Now when I sarted playing online, and paying £50 per year to play online, I thought "online" meant via the internet, you know, the "world wide web" that lets you access information etc from ALL over the world. And up until now, with the release of some games, this was the scale of access gamers had on Xbox 360 LIVE gaming community. Now, a few game developers and publishers have decided it would be a good idea to limit the access some games will offer to those looking to play particular games over the internet using the Xbox 360 LIVE service. If I am to pay such an amount for internet gaming I want the whole world there should I choose to play against any other gamer from around the world, not be given the restrictive region coded choice. After all, what's the point in Microsoft telling Xbox 360 gamers they can play anyone from anywhere when in fact they can't?