Annoying Fail

You know what I hate? I hate having money and seeing something I want, but am unable to buy it. I hate it even worse when other people can do what I can't. What am I getting at here? I'm talking about not being able to buy certain games and downloading certain demos from Live just because of my location. I am an American that is serving in Germany. I have a US Live profile, but I can't buy every game on Live.

I first noticed this annoying little situation back when I first got my 360 in June of this year. Having just got the system (and in a location with a very limited selection of games) I decided to get the best of what was available, which ended up being Mass Effect. I loved the game, and then decided that boning up on the Xbox history wouldn't be bad either. I really wanted to try the first Halo, but without many options to get a copy, I wanted to get if off of the Xbox Originals section in the Live Marketplace. Oh, the cruelty involved. I could not purchase the game because it was not available in my region. How could it not be my region? I have a US profile in for the Marketplace, so I should be able to get all the games that people in the US get, right? Wrong. I have to assume that Microsoft doesn't want my money.

If this was just limited to Originals titles, I might understand, but it's not. I can't even download demos of certain games. I tried to get the Crackdown demo, a game that came out in the first few months of the 360, and got that same infuriating message. And here's what gets me. People are paying $50 a month for this service, for completely unavoidable reasons that I'm not going to go into here, I do not. Yet, the free service of the PlayStation Network does allow me to download EVERYTHING with a US profile. Hell, if I was so inclined, I could also sign up for every region that is available and get ALL their content, too. I have yet to see a "you can see me, but you can't buy me" message on PSN.

Don't get me wrong, I do like Live, and if my situation was better I'd have a gold account right this minute. I just can't stand to be told that I can't spend my money on what I want. I tried to download the Duke Nukem demo yesterday. Guess what happened? Yep, you know it. "Nah, nah. Can't play me." This also extends to trying to add payment options for Microsoft points. I can't buy any of those damn things off of Live due to the fact that my address is an APO address. APO stands for Army Post Office. APO is not an option, I know, I tried to buy points last night and couldn't. It wouldn't be so bad if I could get points cards here, but there aren't any in our PX (Post Exchange, the locale department store, of sorts). The last time I saw one was 2 months ago. Well, no Braid for me.

Microsoft needs to make Live more accessible for people like me. Often, the military community is completely ignored. And it's very frustrating for an active gamer, like myself, to not be able to get the games that I want. I know, we aren't a huge population, and I'm not going to question anyones patriotism, but enough already. Let us spend our money and support our favorite games. PSN does it, why don't you?