Well, Facebook has now deleted one of my accounts. Annoyingly, I can’t access the email account I registered with until tomorrow, to find out if they actually explained anything.
Thinking about customer retention, I was looking at Xbox Live last night, and realised that now, only game demos appear to be freely downloadable, and everything else from videos to pictures and extra content for games is costing Live Points, and therefore, cash.
I can understand why it’s used to drive revenue, but the implications aren’t so good for happy customers, and using Xbox Live as a promotional tool. Whereas I would download the occasional video etc just because it was free and might be interesting, I’m not going to spend even 50p on something I can’t sample beforehand.
And while I can understand why Microsoft don’t necessarily want to keep old games vibrant, when customers could be shelling out £40 for something new, it also makes me less inclined to buy a new game and face paying £5 or £6 for new content, when I could buy an old game for £10 and not bother with downloads…



