So after a one year wait the Video Marketplace (or Video Store as it’s now called) has finally arrived in Canada. So I hopped on Xbox Live right as it launched at 7pm eastern standard time (Dec 10th) to take a glance at the selection, and pew eww it was a stinker. The only really decent flick was 300 and I’ve already seen it 3 times. Here’s the list of Canada Video store launch titles. You would think with a year to prepare they could have gotten some better titles ready for launch, instead they have went the route of, lets win them over with a bunch of horrible movies, “that will show them we care and are sorry about the massive delay.”

However, it doesn’t end there. To show us how much they really loved us they’re charging higher prices for these movies. Instead of the standard US prices of library titles of 240 in SD and 360 in HD and current titles of 320 for SD and 480 for HD, they’re charging library titles at 300 in SD and 440 in HD and current titles at 440 in SD and 580 in HD. Beyond this Microsoft points themselves are more expensive in Canada as well. So if I wanted to download 300 in HD here in Canada it would cost me $8.12, as opposed to $6.00 in the US. This is ridiculous, when the Canadian dollar is so close to parity with the American dollar. Why not charge everything in US dollars and just make us have to convert or online money into US dollars. While all the videogame retailers have dropped their prices in Canada to match the American prices, Microsoft still wants to give the Canadian gamer the shaft, thanks a lot MS.

While the Video store hit Canada on December 10th, 6 days prior to that the fall update hit Canada and the US. Interesting to note though that through some matlockery, I have discovered at least two significant differences. One being that my Free Stuff section in Xbox Live has no free stuff in it, it’s completely empty. While US accounts contain some Doritos nonsense (*Note, I thought the free stuff thing would have cool gamer pics, who the hell wants advertisement gamer pics and themes. I want free ones from games and movies, sadly I have neither).

Secondly, my Canadian account does not have the Inside Xbox news feed. How I am suppose to get the low down on Microsoft propaganda?

Going back to the Video Store, I must say that until MS steps up their game I’m not going to be using their video download service. If you can offer me the arcade games for the same price, why can’t you offer me the movies at the same price? If you can’t offer quality movies at acceptable prices, then you’ll never get the video store a user base in Canada, especially when bit torrenting and P2P sites/programs are legal here.