So, one of the great things about the XBox 360 is the XBox Live Arcade marketplace: you can download trial versions of small arcade-style games (usually puzzle games, card games, shoot ’em ups and the like) and, if you like them, you can pay a small amount to unlock the full thing.
Wait – did I say ‘pay’ a small amount? Well, actually what you do is you buy “Microsoft Points” and use these to pay for the games. It’s a particularly cunning ruse, because you can only buy these points in multiples that don’t correspond to the number of points required to buy anything.
Well, anyway. You can buy these points online through your XBox Live account – but that way, you can only use your credit card, not a debit card. But no fear! You can go to a high street shop and buy a card with a code on it which you can enter into your XBox 360 and it will charge up your account with 2100 Microsoft Points. The cards look like this:
They’re exactly credit card sized, which is handy if you… uh… routinely keep one-time use credit-card sized things in your wallet, or something. Anyway, apparently Microsoft are concerned that these cards are too small and don’t look impressive enough or something, because rather than just getting the card, it comes stuck to a piece of paper, inside a case that looks like this:
And for comparison:
Yes, that’s a full DVD-sized case, for a single credit-card sized piece of paper with a silvery scratchcard strip on the back. And as if that wasn’t stupid enough, yet – behold! The interior of the case:
Yes, that’s right. There isn’t even a spindle inside, so you can’t use it as a case for a DVD you don’t have a case for. It’s a completely useless, superfluous piece of injection moulded plastic.
Maybe Microsoft and Nintendo can come to some sort of arrangement?
I got one of those once. It was the licence key for a piece of software; it came stuck to the back of a DVD case. There was even a cardboard ‘DVD’ inside the case.
It came in a padded jiffy bag.
The jiffy bag came in a 1.5′ by 1′ by 1′ box, filled with styrofoam pellets.
Honestly.
You could practically hear the planet dying as I opened it.
I had a few ink cartridges delivered for my antiquated ink jet. cue enormous box full of bubblewrap, and a two day game of cat and mouse for me and the neighbour it was delivered to to meet up so i could get the box!
In a jiffy bag, they would have fit in my letterbox!
So you use your credit card to buy pretend money that comes in a pretend case to be able to download games that only exist in virtual form.
Someone should invent something like a big inter net work thing that you could just put your credit card number into that creates an account that lets you play the games. Obviously we’re not at at that technical point yet, but it would be nice.
Seriously the whole thing from beginning to end is a waste. Any system that involves buying credits seem dumb to me.