@Ashley Nicholas Dodson: It's called capitalism, and yes, it can be a cruel system for those without capital, but as far as used games are concerned, game developers have already been paid.

@Manic0892 says FUCK YOU BOBBY KOTICK: Agree ... I hate it because it immediately calls attention to itself, breaking my attention from the story. In the attempt at being clever, sound designers are flushing away the suspension of disbelief

@Castrum: It really shouldn't have been called an RPG ... more like an action adventure first person shooter. Most people I played with just clicked on the missions without bothering to read any of the missions and were probably amply confused at the ending. Personally, I enjoyed the story throughout the game. …

@striderkuja: Waiiiit a minute ... you think sex - the act of creating another human being - is the lowest common denominator whereas braining someone with a club or shooting them in the face is not?

Microsoft has got to seriously fix their rating system. Basically, the scale goes from 2.5 stars to 5 stars. There are some truly terrible games rated almost three stars which would translate to an average score. I'm guessing the system's primary purpose is provide a list of "great games" to owners while obscuring…

@-MasterDex-: Nice response. I don't think geeky or nerdy means anything anymore. The words have been co-opted into the language to such a point that the "edge" of the insults have been blunted. I hear people calls themselves geeks and nerds as a point of pride.

@Aklost: Sounds like your dog has been playing too much Fable ;)

@erthos: I think you might be seeing this in the wrong perspective. Right now, the framing is MS vs Activision and I don't think that's accurate. I think it's rather MS & Activision vs. customers.

@DocSeuss: That may be true, but I'm guessing the ultimate price will be anything but casual. These arguments sounds like pleas to the hardcore gamer.

Umm ... here I was expecting a red dot of death ... lines on the screen can result from a number of things as the game seemed to work fine. He should have plugged in some other consoles to test the display as well as checked the cables. Jury is still out on this one.

Wow ... you'd think after the beat down Nintendo has given them, they'd try and avoid the whole razor blade model ... especially with an add-on appearing so late in the console's lifetime. That said, I can't imagine this device costing more than 150 unless this is a way to fund their R&D for the next console. …

@TylDurden: The noise alone seals the deal for me. Since I use my xbox as my main DVD player, the background noise alone makes me want to crush it.

@ARYXANDRE: Would you rather have it not say anything or give no indication that something is wrong? Error messaging is part of good usability design otherwise, you might be sending your console back to microsoft over something unrelated.

@Taggart6: hahahaha ... my first thought at seeing the article image was that Crecente looked like a porn star between gigs.

So goes the old Microsoft pricing strategy ... take a reasonable price, double it, then ship.

I bought them for the simple reason that MS sold points in 500 and 1000 bundles, insuring there was always left over points after a purchase. It sucked having to pay twelve dollars to buy a ten dollar game, and then having to do crazy math point purchases to zero out my account. I guess things have changed now in…