21st Century Digital Boy » 360

Whinge Whinge Complain

outrider — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 21:50:40 +0000

Dear Microsoft,

Why is the Xbox 360 Backwards Compatibility list full of shit? I recently bought Guilty Gear XX again because it’s listed as compatible on the EU list, yet when I try to play it on any of the multiple 360s I have access to, I am prompted to install a compatibility update, after which there’s just a message saying that “This original Xbox game is not supported”.

As it turns out, Silent Hill 2 (which I was considering buying a moment ago) is apparently in a similarly odd state:

Silent Hill 2: Dreams²⁺⁷

² Currently the North American versions of these games are the only ones supported as backward compatible titles on Xbox 360.

⁷ Currently the EMEA/ANZ versions of these games are the only ones supported as backward compatible titles on Xbox 360.

EMEA/ANZ being “Europe, Middle East and Africa / Australia and New Zealand”. Note the decidedly unambiguous use of “only” in both and the application of both to SH2 resulting in a similarly unambiguous clusterfuck. Judging by a bit of research on the Almighty Internet, it seems that the NA version of the game is not region free and won’t run at all on European consoles, while the EMEA version will work fine except for the fact that there’s no video.

What the hell, guys?

Yours,

Outie

Dear Microsoft

outrider — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:32:26 +0000

Why does my Xbox 360 not allow me to remove my old credit card from the list of payment options? It expired almost half a year ago, and both my 360 and Xbox Live know this.
Furthermore, why does my 360 even allow me to select this credit card for buying stuff with on the Marketplace?
And, most importantly, why does it insist on selecting this credit card BY DEFAULT every time I want to buy something?

Yours,

Outie

Update 2009-03-14: While it is possible to remove credit cards from the My Account section on xbox.com, this also failed for me. The reason for this apparently was that I bought my last 12-month Gold membership with it about a year ago. I assume – I HOPE – that Xbox Live would have noticed that the card is no longer valid and switched to the new card once the current membership expires. After manually re-selecting 12 Months Gold from the Membership Level menu on Xbox.com > My Account and “paying” for it with my new card (which will only happen once the current membership expires), I could remove the old card from my account.

360 Spring Update brings improvements, hilarity

outrider — Thu, 10 May 2007 23:02:42 +0000

Caption

So it seems that most companies were not aware that the new dashboard update for the 360 would bring a revamped Marketplace, including Genre texts for the Games section. I’d seen Amped 3 saying “Sell Text” before, but… well, see for yourself.