SlaughterX says:

This little press conference is full of crap and here’s why…

Last Christmas I decided to replace my old Pro system with a new Elite systems for various different reasons. One of those reasons is because my older system kept freezing up and had to be replaced. Instead of replacing it with another Pro system, I recieved a Core system with the white disc try (which didn’t match with my now obsolete HD-DVD add on drive). This didn’t really bother me much because I had planned on getting rid of the console and replacing it with an Elite anyway.

The other reasons why I wanted an Elite were obvious… Bigger HDD, with the amount of DLC now available, 20GBs just doesn’t cut it, and I got sick of deleting something whenever I wanted to DL something Else. HDMI was yet another reason to upgrade. Microsoft did not feel this feature was needed when the 360 first came out, but now that just about every HDTV on the market now has at least one HDMI input, they have changed their minds. Also going hand in hand with HDMI is 1080p, a feature for most people which is possible using HDMI (espiecally for all the poor souls who invested in the HD-DVD add on, like myself). Finally, the last (and most unimportant) reason for getting the Elite, because it’s black, and matches everything else in my home theater, finally.

So those are the reasons why I replaced my year old Pro unit that I paid $400 for, for an even more expensive Elite for $450. I also bought thee 512MB memory card to transfer over all my saved games, etc… the Wifi adapter needed to get my 360 online in the living room, and of course the HD-DVD add on to watch movies in 1080p on my TV. So we have $450+$180+$100+$50… $780 in hardware from my pocket to Microsofts, not including the purchase price of the original 360, games, extra controllers, vision cam, etc, etc, etc… needless to say I’ve spent a lot of money being an Xbox fan in the past few years.

Anyway I am getting way beside the point here, and that is the poor customer service I’ve experienced from Microsoft in the past few months since upgrading my console. Now I am aware of the problems with transferring over XBLA games to a new console. From what I heard the only sacrifice I would be making is that I would have to be online in order to play these games on my new console, which is one of the reasons why I invested in the wifi adapter. However, while most of the many XBLA games I own work fine with out a hitch, I am still having trouble playing a certain 3 games (Streets of Rage 2, Golden Axe, and Double Dragon), online or off.

So facing this problem I called Microsoft customer support. The first time I was told to register my console and wait a couple of weeks for my DRM licenses to be transferred to my new console. Weeks passed and I still could not play these games, so I called them back. Next I give the rep my Windows Live ID and password so they could try redownloading them on their console, which still didn’t work. So I waited a couple more weeks and called them back today, only to be told that because I bought a new console there was nothing they could do about replacing the games I already paid for or refunding my points, regardless to what a former press annoucement says.

Now this is just absurd. Here I am, a customer that has pay many thousands of dollars to Microsoft in the past years on the Xbox 360 alone, and they refuse to accomidate me for $12 worth of arcade games that I can no longer play thanks to their screwed up DRMs. I was looking forward to downloading Rez HD, Ikaruga, Bionic Commando, Street Fighter 2 HD Remix, and various other Live Arcade games in the future, but I just can’t do that now knowing that if this 360 decides to crap out on me, or if I decide to upgrade my console to something better that I might not ever be able to play these games again.

This is not how you gain customers, and this is surely not the best way to go about keeping them. Thanks to these issues I will most likely be purchasing all future multiplatform games like SFTHDR and BC:R from the PSN. Should I even bother replacing my 360 if it dies again? These are questions that I probably would never have to even ask myself had Microsoft handled such simple matters with any type of compassion, instead of just saying you chose to pay us more money for a seemingly better system, now pay us even more for the same games that you already paid or suck it.

So who else have been having problems like this? How does it make you feel? Have you done anything about it? I plan on sending this to Microsoft via e-mail, posting it on my 1up blog, and making a big a deal as possible until someone addresses this problem. Considering all the bad press Microsoft has had in the past year you think that they would want to avoid as many problems like this as possible, but I guess they really need that $12 in Microsoft Points…