"MS points weren't meant to mislead customers"
Microsoft boxx Aaron Greenberg says that MS Points were never meant to mislead customers using Xbox Live.
Microsoft, like Nintendo, uses a points currency system where users first have to buy a set amount of points using real money before buying the content they want. It's a lot of faff and we far prefer Sony's transparency by pricing content in actual, real currencies.
Microsoft has recently dropped the MS Points system for some Xbox services though, such as the new Games On Demand service, which is priced in proper monies.
"We never intended to ever mislead people," Greenberg told G4TV. "We want to be transparent about it, and so it is something that we're looking at.
"How can we be more transparent and let people see it in actual dollars? You've got to think that we have one service that we're offering around the world. The nice thing about Points is that no matter if you're on the JPY or the EUR or the USD - something that's 200 Points is 200 Points everywhere around the world."
"There's more technical complexities to being able to put local prices in," he added. "You have to do that for every product in every country and you then have to deal with currency fluctuations. So there's some challenges to that, but we absolutely did it with the Games On Demand, response has been good and absolutely it's something we're looking at doing."
One Microsoft Point is worth about £0.0085 (€0.012).
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12 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyAnd do the points adjust as easily as exchange rate?
And can you buy just 10 points if you are only 10 points short?
the problem is that there is no way i'm going to invest in points as it seems like lost money
say the DAO DLC costs 180 points but you can only buy in blocks of 200 the immediately i am paying 10% more than i need to
The problem is that you cannot change the country on your live account!
F*king ms
im in ireland and 2100 points cost the same here as in the uk (within a few euros) but the on demand games that came out lately cost alot more to buy in euros in ireland than in uk with pounds. its not an exchange rate its a local pricing.
points are fairer than local pricing, the fairest of all would be everything based on one currency, say the dollar for sake of argument and everyone pays the exchange rate at the time
I thought that was such an awesome idea, until I realised that MS points were different.
Buying stuff on Live with points earned by playing games on Live would have been pretty great, no? Why the hell would I use real money to get a new theme for the xbox interface!?
So you end up having left over points that you have rightfully paid for but can't spend. It's unfair to the consumer. It also calls into question the "value" of MS points vs real money. That value is basically imaginary because if something costs 200 MS points all around the world, you're basically altering the value of the product based on who's buying it due to the value of whatever countries currency.
If Microsoft wants to stop misleading consumers they should get rid of their points system completely. There was no question on PSN when I bought a PSOne classic. It said it costs $9.99. I confirmed the purchase and it charged my associated card $9.99. I got exactly what I paid for and I didn't have like... $2.78 "credit" left over that I paid to Sony that I can't get anything with.
You found the real reason why the point system exists in the first place.