Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

It’s time we have a talk, Microsoft. This has been building up for a while, but it’s time to let loose with both barrels at this point. Were World War Z, aka The Zombie War, to begin this very day, I would not be (too) saddened if the first people to fall to the zombie horde were those who make decisions about the retail price of items like the Xbox 360 Elite ($479), the stand-alone 120 GB hard drive (rumored to be $200), or the already released wi-fi adapter ($100).

I feel like…

I feel like every time an accessory gets placed at a ridiculous price-point, that Microsoft is pretending to be my friend, but then gossiping about me behind my back. “Hey guys, did you hear about George? Yeah, I told him my new wi-fi adapter was going to be $100… and I think he believed me. What a MORON!” Gee thanks, Microsoft. Thanks for treating me like a freaking idiot. Because I would, in actual fact, be an idiot to pay $100 for a USB-to-Wi-fi adapter that sells for under $20 on other, non-Microsoft-controlled, platforms. Or is added for free. I feel cheated every time.

Every time something like this whole Xbox 360 Elite thing happens, a little part of me… gets insanely angry and kills another little part of me with a curb stomp or grenade tag. Perhaps I am alone. Maybe the rest of the Xbox 360 owners just feel peachy keen about having their top-of-the-line console they bought sometime in the past 16 months suddenly become obsolete. It would be like Microsoft releasing Vista, and then a year later releasing Vista X-treme, but those that early adopted Vista get screwed because there’s no upgrades and no refunds. It would be one thing if the 120 GB hard drive were actually reasonably priced, or if my crappy original Xbox 360 shipped with HDMI so I could plug a digital signal into my glorious LCD flat panel display.

Why do you keep treating your customers like rich idiots? Of course, some of us ARE rich idiots, but it’s no way to win over dedicated fans.

Gah… just stop right there. I know all about your business model. I know how you sell the console at near cost (or at a loss), and make the most money from software and accessory sales. This is a practice as old as the electronics industry. Why else would a fiber-optic cable that costs less than $3 to manufacture be sold at exorbitant prices.

And another thing, what about the people that have been screwed. I don’t mean the rumored failure rates of 3-4%, I mean the people that have actually experienced horrifying, catastrophic, nigh-criminal breakdowns. Can they expect to receive these new, upgraded Xbox 360 “Elites”? Not likely… more refurbished garbage for you, it seems.

Now, that being said, I would LOVE to be able to say how great the Xbox 360 Elite will be, or how much I’m looking forward to it, but I can’t. The fact is that the 10 million man user base just got kicked in the mean bean machine. I will NOT under any circumstances purchase ANOTHER Xbox 360 simply because it happens to be the kind of system I should ALREADY be owning for $400. For $479, I might as well trade in an additional Xbox 360 game and buy a PS3. At least the PS3 has a consumer-upgradeable hard drive that I can replace with an off-the-shelf model, instead of an overpriced turd.