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August 10th, 2012, 09:11 GMT · By

Real-Money Prices on Xbox Live Were the Result of Error, Microsoft Says

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Real currencies won't be present on Xbox Live
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Microsoft has released a statement regarding a recent glitch experienced on its Xbox Live online service, saying that an error caused prices for certain items to be displayed in real-world currencies, not in Microsoft’s virtual MS Points one.

Microsoft’s Xbox Live offers Xbox 360 owners access to all sorts of impressive content, from games to DLC, as well as plenty of other things like entertainment apps.

Quite annoyingly, however, is that all of these items are priced in Microsoft Points, the company’s own virtual currency. This forces those that want to buy things to first get special vouchers that they must redeem for certain amounts of MS Points.

This has caused plenty of problems for Microsoft and many rumors said that the company was considering switching the MS Points with real-world currencies like U.S. dollars, Euros, and other such things.

Yesterday, website SAQGaming uncovered some Xbox Live items that were priced in actual dollars, not in MS Points.

This led to a bit of speculation about an imminent change, but Microsoft has now released a statement, confirming that the items were priced in dollars because of an error.

"Yesterday, a few avatar items appeared with an option to purchase with local currency, instead of Microsoft Points," the company told GamesIndustry.

"This display error doesn't signal a change in payment options, but rather an error in how the offers were configured in our services which resulted in an inconsistent experience. It is in the process of being resolved."

Judging by this statement, it seems that MS Points will continue to be used by Microsoft in the foreseeable future on Xbox Live.

MS Points haters can still hope that, with the arrival of a new Xbox, in the form of the so-called Xbox 720, Microsoft might change its Xbox Live currency policies.


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READER COMMENTS:


Comment #1 by: Eric on 13 Aug 2012, 19:58 UTC reply to this comment

It is annoying and * , but a breakage model that makes sense to their wallets. After all, with fake currency not only is it hard to tell how much things cost, you'll always have to buy MS points in uneven amounts, resulting in leftover points you paid for but haven't used, encouraging you to buy more at a later date, or forcing you to throw away money.

Is it any wonder a company that does a big update to push ads to your start-up dashboard would refuse to stop this practice and give up that profit? I mean, come on, this is Microsoft we are talking about here...

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