International Gamers Should Boycott Xbox Live Arcade

Microsoft ... Microsoft and damned Microsoft. The news that Microsoft would actually give you something for free is completely bitter and has no sweet to it for international customers. Aegis Wing is the Xbox Live Arcade release for this Wednesday and it will be free for North American Xbox Live customers and not for the rest of the world. How's them for apples. A big suck eggs to all of Microsoft's loyal international Xbox Live Customers.

Microsoft screws their loyal customer base continuously. Australian's have to put up with the problems associated with using laggy overseas servers. Everyone else in the rest of the world has to put up with the unfairness associated with regionalization of media content so that they really have no great advantage to actually subscribing to Xbox Live in the first place.

Then there is the hypocrisy of Microsoft. They come out and publicly criticize Epic for wanting to release free content on Xbox live. They publicly air their dirty laundry with Epic over the inclusion of the extra 256mb of RAM on the Xbox 360 (which will be a blessing in disguise for Microsoft) and then they come out and release free content. With the release of the buggy Vista you really have to wonder what is going on at this company from the top down.

Microsoft are not even sure whether this game release will be available for the rest of the world at all. Xbox Live Arcade is all about more content for US citizens and less for the rest of the world.

It gives me no satisfaction to say this, but I think that International gamers should boycott Xbox Live Arcade game releases for the next month to teach Microsoft a lesson. While I don't believe the developers should suffer as a result of Microsoft's stupidity but what else can you do to make a point? It would be nice if our US gaming brothers and sisters supported us in this cause. This is the only way that we, as consumers, can have any impact on the decision making process. We have to hurt them in the hip pocket. Make sure that they suffer financially from the xenophobic regionalizing decisions which are made. I am sick of paying for a "premium" service which doesn't exist.

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