Every Microsoft product - by law - has to have one *evil* feature

Kotaku spits petrol on the glowing embers of Xbox micropayments. This is the nagging itch to owning an Xbox (and Live account), the knowlwedge that Microsoft are on a mission to gouge you when and where the opportunity arises. Perhaps this is a little unfair, after all Live offers invaluable demos and game trailers and their arcadde titles all come with trial downloads. Nevertheless, the brazenness of drip-dripping new content on users for a fee (even a small one) is pretty shocking. Even more so when applied to a game like Chromehounds which, from what I can gather, relies almost wholly on online play for its appeal. This is effectively corporate legitimation of the sort of mentality that trades MMORPG currency for real-world cash-money.

What's worse is the sigh-inducing inevitability of it all. The purpose of a corporation ios to make money, and they're not going to miss an opportunity to do so. The only option for consumers is to grit their teeth and boycott such products - and take note of those downloads which are (at present) free.