14 DAY TRIAL // While not exactly as troublesome as the Monopoly dollar, the custom currency of Microsoft has generated a lot of confusion among people. The "Points" was something that took a lot of getting used to, and a lot of people are still having a hard time trying to figure out if Modern Warfare 2 on the Xbox 360 is more or less than a second-hand car. The lack of a familiar currency, something that we can directly relate our income to, has made everyone wonder why Microsoft never just went for the American dollar and made our lives easier.
The subject is something that Microsoft was approached with on several occasions, and its latest discussion was between its Aaron Greenberg and G4. "We never intended to ever mislead people," Greenberg said. "I think we want to be transparent about it, and so it is something that we're looking at. How can we be more transparent and let people see it in actual dollars? The fact is that you've got to think that we have one service that we're offering around the world. The nice thing about points is that no matter if you're on the yen or the euro or the dollar -- something that's 200 points is 200 points everywhere around the world."
But these points are indeed confusing, and the main reason for this is because, according to the region you're in, the points have a different cost. "There's more technical complexities to being able to put local prices in," he explained. "You have to do that for every product in every country and you then have to deal with currency fluctuations."
But this doesn't mean that Microsoft never tried to abandon its Microsoft Points in favor of the dollar. Games on Demand is MP free, and since things are going just fine with the service, it's hard to see why Microsoft didn't convert its other services to the dollar. "We did it with Games On Demand and the response has been really good. I think people like to see the dollar amount," Greenberg confessed. "Response has been good and absolutely it's something we're looking at doing."