Real Money Prices On Xbox LIVE Marketplace Labeled “A Mistake”

<p>Yesterday&comma; a couple avatar items on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace were shown as being purchasable via real currency instead of Microsoft Points&period; Microsoft is quoted insisting&colon;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<blockquote><p><em>&&num;8220&semi;This display error doesn&&num;8217&semi;t signal a change in payment options&comma; but rather an error in how the offers were configured in our services which resulted in an inconsistent experience&period; It is in the process of being resolved&period;&&num;8221&semi;<&sol;em><&sol;p><&sol;blockquote>&NewLine;<p>This kind of change would effectively put Microsoft in even more direct competition with the Apple and PlayStation stores&comma; seeing as both of the latter currently use real money as currency&period; Lots of speculation about the Microsoft Points system makes it out to be a greedy scheme&comma; as more often than not&comma; you end up purchasing an amount of points that is impossible to spend in full&period;  This leaves your account with &&num;8220&semi;unused money&&num;8221&semi; sitting in it to stare players in the face whenever they see their account balance&period; After players see this&comma; it then makes more sense to purchase more points in order to use the points they have&comma; and therefore get the most bang for their buck&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>How do you feel about the Microsoft Points system&quest;  Would you prefer a real money marketplace&quest;<&sol;p>&NewLine;