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MS Details Last.fm on Xbox Live, Marketplace Changes
Two of the less prominent announcements during E3 were that Last.fm would be coming to Xbox Live, and so would the ability to purchase games that were only available through physical media in the past. Microsoft has now elaborated on how those services will work. According to Kotaku, "The [Last.fm] service will be made available later this year, and will be free to all Xbox Live Gold subscribers. Once accessed, the Last.fm section of the 360 dashboard will function in much the same way as the popular internet radio station does on your PC." The Games on Demand service will let people pay the actual cost of the game with a credit card, bypassing the Microsoft Point system if they want to. To start, the service will be focused on making the popular, but older games available, rather than launching new games through it. Licensing for the games will work in much the same as for Arcade games now, so players will be able to re-download deleted games at will.
How about having some of the download only content available on physical media?
My biggest beef is that when I buy a download, If I want to get rid of it, I just burn the money. At least with a Disc I can sell it used to someone and recoup a couple of bucks.
Castle Crashers is fun, but I've played it through 12 times now, I'd like to give it to a neighbor or sell it for $1.00 on ebay.
This is why I hate downloaded content.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
and why do you have to pay for stuff that is FREE on the pc?
This is what sucks with locked in systems.
Requiring GOLD xbl membership for last.fm is silly. That being said, its free (for Gold members) they're not charging you for it. As for downloaded games those aren't free on the pc.
I believe that the parent is referring to "downloadable content". Since the dawn of PC games, addons have always been free. You can download a Total Conversion for DooM, a Mod for Half-Life, New planes for IL2, extra unit packs for Total Annihilation, etc...
I don't have an issue with micropayments for video games (considering I'm a small game developer), but I can understand the complaint of the grandfather post.
It's been a painful trend over the last few years on console games that have micropayments to release half-finished games and charge for map packs. Take Unreal tournament or Quake 3 when they came out. Both contained over 10 maps. Map packs and patches were free. Compare that to, say, Halo 3 or Left 4 Dead, Both started with less than 10 maps. Halo 3 charges for more maps.
Even apples to apples, You could find yourself paying for DLC on a console when the exact same type of content is free to download on a PC with some games.
If you are playing on the same physical console you do not have to be logged in. If you do something like switch consoles, or upgrade to say, the Elite Version of the xbox, the downloaded content will not play on that xbox unless the account that purchased it is logged in and signed in to live.
The points system is the stupidest thing. I have to buy a block of points that don't have a covnversion rate in base 10 (instead, it's 80 points to the dollar).
Then, the sellers pick an arbitrary number of points (320 points) and want me to do a conversion in my head to figure out what I'm actually being charged (which I'm capable of, but shouldn't have to. In this case, $4). Then, if I have only have 300 MS points, I have to buy a block of at least 400 more.
MS needs to ditch the points system. I rarely buy anything on XBL (except when I win points through sweepstakes). If they would just cut the bullshit I'd buy a lot more.
The freely available x360mediaserver http://sourceforge.net/projects/x360mediaserve/ will send streaming internet radio to the xbox360. It runs on any PC with java (Linux or windows). I haven't tried it with last.fm, but I assume it would work. If it doesn't, run the Lastfm stream through LastFMProxy http://vidar.gimp.org/?page_id=50 and connect to the proxied stream with x360mediaserve.