Venting frustrations with Microsoft

Frugality seems to run deeply in my family. It's very evident in my father, who was notoriously cheap. It's something that my family and I tend to often point out in jokes or monologues about our family's quirks. As i got older I tend to notice that I've inherited this same quirk. However whereas he refused to spend money on things he didn't need, I tend to find myself not wanting to spend a lot of money on things within gaming. Call it being a minimalist gamer, or call it what you will, but I just don't like buying things that I could just as easily do without. This is probably why I find myself getting more and more frustrated with Microsoft this gen.

I've been wanting a 360 for a long time. For one: There are a couple of games on the HD end that I'm interested in playing, and obviously I'm not going to be playing them on my Wii anytime soon, and two: I just didn't have the money to buy a PS3 at the time. Somehow through the miracle of overzealous teenage relatives I found myself the lucky recipient of a 360 with a couple games to boot. This was great. However, in hindsight I tend to wish that the scenario in the first Gremlins movie would of played out; where an elderly asian man would tell me that Xbox 360s require many responisiblities. Mainly having to buy the damn thing in parts to get the optimal experience.

"What gives, Spiracy?" You ask. "You already talked about how you had to use your laptop as a wireless gateway because you're not buying the Wifi adapter. Stop your bitching, already!" Well, yeah I could go on about how I'm still a little pissed about Wifi not being included in the console specs. For something that two consoles have already made standard this is kind of a backwards step in Microsoft's console history. However despite that, and the gripes about shelling out money for Live subscriptions I have an new problem, which happens to be the damned wireless controllers. I don't hate the wireless controllers, but I do hate the fact that I have to either buy high end batteries or buckle down and buy a charger. I chose the latter.

It's kind of baffling though. This isn't my first wireless controller, and my Wii remotes (they two now have a charger) and wavebird controller are far more energy conserving than the 360 pads. I shouldn't have to remove batteries from a controller when I cut the 360 off. Whatever. I had to basically just suck it up and get a charger anyways, but Why not just included a usb cord that would of supplied power without interrupting gameplay in the middle of something like a online match or a pivotal boss battle, or something like that.

Just a thought.