If you're anything like me, you'll love console themes, but can't stand the fact that Microsoft charges stupid amounts of moon money for the privilege of downloading. Jonathan Blow would like you to know that, although he has a Braid theme available on the Xbox Live Marketplace, he's charging for it under duress.
"Unfortunately, we had to charge the standard Premium Theme price of 250 Microsoft Points (which is about $3.10 in American money)," confirms the indie developer. "We want to make it free, but Microsoft doesn’t like giving things out for free. But if you do buy it, you can be secure in the knowledge that you own one of the few Premium Themes that is not an advertisement-- there is no text in the Braid theme anywhere. (Seriously, Microsoft, what is with the Subway: Eat Fresh Theme?)"
I've got to love Blow's subversive swipes, especially considering what an arsehole Microsoft likes to be about indie developers and XBLA games. Honestly, it's difficult justifying paying for a theme at the best of times, but ever since I got my PS3 and had access to some real themes that are more than just glorified wallpapers, for free, I find Microsoft's "premium" offers to be a complete joke.
That said ... I do really like Braid ...
Jim Sterling serves as reviews editor for Destructoid.com, head of the Podtoid podcast, and produces a number of news stories, original features, one-of-a-kind videos. With his passionate argumentative style, controversial opinions, harsh delivery, and dedication to brutal honesty Sterling is a name that you can't help but recognize.
Likes
PS2, iPod Touch, Silent Hill 2, Metal Gear Solid, Dynasty Warriors 3
Meet the rest of the team
| BBcode help |
| [b]Bold text[/b] |
Bold text |
| [i]Italic text[/i] |
Italic text |
| [url]http://www.dtoid.com/[/url] |
http://www.dtoid.com |
| [url=http://www.dtoid.com/]Web link[/url] |
Web link |
|
| [img]http://www.example.com/robot.jpg[/img] |
 |
Post a comment! You can also post a photo below:
Comment with Facebook
Click connect and comment instantly!
|
Comment with Dtoid
New? SIGN UP - it takes 5 seconds
|
27 comments | showing # 1 to 27
|
Comment with Facebook
Click connect and comment instantly!
|
Comment with Dtoid
New? SIGN UP - it takes 5 seconds
|
Comments policy
Destructoid is an open discussion community. You don't need to "audition" to post a comment - just speak your mind. We respect differing opinions on the site, so have at it. Be smart, funny, insightful, clueless, or cute -- but back it up with substance. Keep your cool, keep it fun. We only ask that you act respectfully and above all: don't be a troll and ruin it for everyone else. Don't bring down gamers or we'll, you know, gently shoot you in the face and stuff you into a flaming mailbox. Each comment is your opportuntity to make this community awesomer. Is that even a word?
Avoiding the banhammer only requires common sense: spamming, trolling, racism, NSFW stuff, and other forms of sucking will not be tolerated. If anyone is griefing please report abuse. Be good. Don't suck!
Contest:
8:00 PM on 01.11.2009
| 
Brilliant, I might pick this up when I have some spare points. And Braid.
I think why Blow is ticked about this is because I know he spent way more than 5x as much time/effort into making the game than he did putting that jpeg together.
Or even take it to retail games. A retail games costs $60. The theme costs $3. Does it really only cost 20x as much money and time to make, say, Fallout 3 or Gears 2 as it does a jpeg?
It's not that I think everything should be free, but to charge up to 33% of a game's price (for 800 point XBLA games) for a lousy jpeg is just, well, it's just plain stupid.
Shure it would be better if MS just gave that crap away for free and it is laugable that both Microsoft charges for it and that people are dumb enough to buy it.
But the only thing I use the Dashboard for is to get to the content that I want and not to look how pretty it is. They should rather fix the damn issue that the marketplace now always loads your entire download history befor displaying the conten, which slows the damn thing down to a crawl.
I've got about 50 themes for my PS3, all free and most of them extremely goodlooking :-)
So WTF SONY?!!? PAY THE MAN!
Sony also started with Premium Themes not very long ago and that having to pay for something like that is stupid.
Also you can make your own themes on PS3 and load them via USB stick.
So yeah, it's not all going to Microsoft.
Jim, they're not charing for the Subway theme, are they? That's hilarious.
And the problem here - though I respect Mssr. J. Blow - is that Activision already tried this with the CoD4 DLC, and it was made very public that they were forced to charge, so now any developer of superfluous widgets can say that they wanted to release for free but big bad Microsoft said they couldn't. All the good rep, all the money, none of the generosity.
I wish it was free. No way I'm paying for it sadly. Now, if it was furniture for my Home...