Imorital On The Web

Not again! Why?

I’ve just been browsing around the Major Nelson web site for Xbox 360 games, and happened across the following press release:

If you live in the US, you know that the day after Thanksgiving is (for better or worse) called Black Friday. Along with many of your favorite stores, the Xbox LIVE Marketplace is also having a Black Friday sales event…and we’re actually stretching it through the weekend. Starting this Friday Gold Members located in the US can save on select Marketplace Offers.
^{Taken from http://majornelson.com/archive/2008/11/26/xbox-live-marketplace-black-friday-sale.aspx?PageIndex=1}

The key to my gripe is the first six words that we see yet again: If you live in the US

Why?

We see this time and again with the US and Japan getting many more offers than Europe. There’s people on the forum complaining and swearing to pledge allegiance to Sony and the PS3, but frankly Sony are often worse as far as the euro gamer goes. Surely in this time of global digital downloads MS are only hurting themselves and their sales?

To his credit, the Major notes " I gave the feedback about having this available for other regions, but due to a lot of issues it was not possible. :(". I find that a bit odd since technically it should be more of the same, and as far as the rights issue goes, if the game was available for release globally.... and if that’s not good enough then how about giving non US gamers alternatives.

I’ve got 1600 credits sitting in my account at the moment, I suspect they’ve been there since February, but there’s nothing I want to spend them on, at least not at the current prices. There’s a couple of things I’d probably (no, definitely) have gone for at the reduced prices.

Oh well. I guess I’ll just hang onto my credits a bit longer.