Xbox Live’s new “On Demand” game buying feature

Microsoft decided to add a new system to XBL that allows you to buy full retail games via the console. While that seems like a great idea, there are a couple of downfalls that make this offer really stupid.

  1. You can only pay via credit card (which, may I remind you, is not easy to remove on XBL)
  2. The prices are compared to retail. NO. BAD MICROSOFT. What makes downloading games a better option than buying retail is that the prices are normally cheaper online.
  3. Hard drive space. Obviously, this is important because Xbox 360 have really low hard drive capacities. I mean, my Xbox has a 20GB hard drive and I have about 3GB left. New Xbox 360 hard drives range from 80 to about 160 dollars; so unless Microsoft decides to either offer an upgrade for free or at a reduced rate for us owners of the 20GB drives, this offer is useless.
  4. DRM. So what happens if your Xbox fries? Most content is tied to your Xbox hardware id (content you have can only play on your Xbox) and your Live id. The Mythic and Legendary map pack for Halo 3 have this form of DRM, will these “On Demand” games have it too?

Don’t get your hopes up.