Microsoft Points

Microsoft Points (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Points) are what you use to buy downloadable content over Xbox Live. You buy the points either in a store (they come as a code on a card) or online (with a credit card), then you spend the points to buy online content such as movies, game addons, and arcade games. It’s a very roundabout method, especially when they could just charge a credit card directly. The biggest problem with it is you have to buy points in various allotments, and most of the time you need to buy many more points than you need to download the item you want because of the point allotment values. You may want to buy an 800 point item, but the two closest amounts you can buy are either 500 or 1000, which means that after you get the item you want you’ve still got 200 points that you had no real use for. Microsoft has done very little about this complaint; the most they’ve done is allow you to pay with a credit card directly to buy full games over the internet, but everything else still requires MS Points. It’s proven to be an issue for consumers, so really a sensible thing to do on Microsoft’s part would be to just do away with the system and bill a credit card directly; unfortunately, they don’t seem to be even hinting at doing as much.