Microsoft has over the years been the target of much public frustration and grief. Whether rightly or wrongly is mostly in the eye of the beholder and depends on which side of the fence you sit on. You may love them, you may hate them, but as usual, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Yes, blue screens and red rings of death are a real thing, and yes, Microsoft is worth USD 300 billion with their stock reaching 52-week high just this week and Windows still powers close to 90% of all laptops and desktops.

People sometimes refer to Microsoft as Micro$oft in an attempt to suggest that all the company cares about is making huge piles of cash. That is a seriously misplaced perception, however. Microsoft, in fact, does not want your money. They are not interested in it. Don’t believe me? Read on.

Let me start by saying that my personal relationship with the company has been generally neutral. I have had positive experiences with Microsoft products and do not harbor negative feelings towards them just because, you know, all the cool kids do. (I will say, though, that I do hate Internet Explorer with a vengeance. If you are a web developer, you cannot help that.)

I managed several computer networks in my career and they all ran on Windows. The biggest network had over 100 machines and close to 80 or 90 daily users. Heavens know I had to fix my share of various system errors and strange bugs, and occasionally experienced extreme bitterness towards the system. But in general it worked. People were getting their jobs done and I cannot say that if we used Macs or Linux boxes instead, my life would have been significantly easier. I now have a MacBook Pro and while I love the physical build and quality of the machine, I am not enamored of Mac OS—weird, over-complicated keyboard shortcuts, Finder, I’m looking at you! I had it crash on me multiple times. It is arguably a better and more convenient system for development work, but if I can find a similar build-quality Windows machine, I will be tempted to switch back next time I am buying a new laptop (and to install Ubuntu alongside Windows to get the best of the both worlds).

Gaming-wise, I have been predominantly a PC gamer my whole life, having started back in the early 90’s when my parents spent a year worth of their salary and bought a pumped-up state-of-the-art 386 with 4MB of RAM. For some time I did not quite see the appeal of consoles as compared with the speed and precision of a mouse and a keyboard I found the console controller clumsy and slow. It probably has to do with my background as well as the earlier generations of consoles were essentially unavailable in the Czech Republic. However, later I succumbed and got an Xbox 360. And I loved it. The convenience and comfort of a big screen and a living room sofa definitely had its charms. We had a PlayStation 3 at work and personally I think that the 360 was a better system—I liked the OS environment better, the controller felt much more comfortable in my hand, I was more interested in the Xbox exclusives. But I am not fanatical about it—I had good times with the PS3 too. Metal Gear Solid 4 and Heavy Rain certainly left some memorable impressions on me. If more of my friends had a PS3 instead of an Xbox, I would have likely bought it instead and would not regret the decision.

In any case, earlier this month my yearly Xbox Live membership expired. I was of course planning on renewing it. I play online with my friends abroad as it helps us stay in touch. I really got into the World of Tanks when it came out in early February and was looking forward to more epic battles on the gentle, rolling hills of Malinovka. I have been pleased to get two “free” games every month under the Free with Gold scheme, even if the PS+ selection offered more attractive titles. And of course Dark Souls 2, which I have been eagerly anticipating ever since being hacked and smashed to death more times than I can count in the original Dark Souls, was just released and I was eager to praise the sun once again.

So I opened the email Microsoft conveniently sent me to remind me about my expiring Live subscription, clicked on the renew link and was taken to the Xbox website. I selected the yearly subscription and wanted to pay with my credit card:

All good. Except that all the States/provinces were US states only and thus I could not add my credit card to complete the payment:

Sometimes the State/province field is dependent on the value of the country field, so I set it to Hong Kong, thinking that the state options might change. But this did not help—I was still able to select US states only. I tried to leave it empty, but it was a mandatory field and it had to be filled in. I tried a couple of other things to try to trick the form into submitting, but nothing helped. It took me a while to realize that all this was due to my account’s locale being set to the US.

A curious reader may ask why my locale was set to the US when I live in Hong Kong. The long answer is a material for a separate blog post, but the short answer is that when Halo 3 was released under the Free with Gold program, it was forced onto the Hong Kong region in Chinese (in Mandarin Chinese, for that matter, which is spoken in mainland China, and not in Cantonese which is the Chinese dialect prevalent in Hong Kong). I was advised to change my locale to the US by the Xbox support as they thought this would let me download the English version of the game. It did not and the support team had to escalate the case to the engineering team. It took a while and quite a bit of going back and forth with the support folks, but to give credit where it is due, they did resolve the issue in the end and enabled the English Halo version for download in Hong Kong. (If you are based here and are now playing Halo 3 in English, you can thank me.) I digress, however.

I changed my locale to Hong Kong and got to see this screen:

Wait, I am on my computer with a credit card in my hand, I do not want to wait until I get to my Xbox. Surely there has to be a way to renew my Live membership online. With the locale set to Hong Kong, I went back to the Join Xbox Live Gold page, clicked on the Join Xbox Live button and was taken here:

OK, so for some reason renewing my subscription in Hong Kong with a credit was not going happen. I could only wonder as to why on earth that would be the case, but never mind, never mind, let me buy the subscription card instead. I clicked on the purchase button and was redirected to a Microsoft online store… only to be told that the subscription cards were out of stock:

Say whaaat? I could not pay with my credit card and I could not purchase the subscription card because it was out of stock. This about summarizes how I felt in the moment:

By now I had spent good 20 or 30 minutes trying to do something that should not have taken more than 2 or 3 minutes. I tried to jump through all the hoops that were placed in front of me, but it still was not enough.

So I lost it. I said ‘screw this’, slid my credit card back into my wallet, and decided that I will not be renewing my Live membership. If in this day and age you are not able to take my money even if I am willing to throw it at you like you are a Playboy centerfold in a small-town strip joint, you do not deserve it. It is doubly the case if the fix is relatively trivial. Microsoft, if you happen to read this post, here are a few simple suggestions that would ensure that I remain your customer:

1. Give me the option to pay with a credit card even if I reside outside of the US—there is no good reason why this should not be possible;
2. On the credit card page, allow me to select State/province regardless of what my locale is set to, or at least make it obvious that this is what the problem is and allow me to change the locale without leaving the page;
3. If you cannot offer me the possibility of paying with my credit card—however unbelievable that sounds—make sure that you have the subscription cards in stock. As a matter of fact, why is there even a need for a physical subscription card? Just let me purchase it, generate the subscription code in your system, and send it to me in an email or display it on the page.

So there you have it. Microsoft does not want your money. And thus they will not be getting mine.

As I mentioned above, I really liked the Xbox 360 console and I thought Microsoft did a great job breaking into the console market and challenging the established PlayStation brand and user base. That was by no means an easy task and despite some initial setbacks, Microsoft handled it impressively well. But for a while now I have been wondering whether the Xbox team have been resting on their laurels and whether they know what they are doing. The conflicting messages and the obvious unpreparedness surrounding the Xbox One announcement do not lend much reason for confidence and the above experience with the Live membership renewal just tips the scale even further for me. Let’s hope that this is just a shaky beginning of a new console cycle and that they will get their game together eventually (no pun intended). But at this point I am so disenchanted that I have zero inclination to renew my Live subscription and if I were to buy a new console, I would be seriously looking at PlayStation 4 despite my years of history with the Xbox brand. It would be hard to wave a goodbye to my account with all its accumulated achievements and gamer points, but not hard enough for me not to make the switch.

However, I am not looking to buy a new console at the moment. With the Steam Machines and the SteamOS slowly making their way to the market, PC gaming is now looking more attractive than ever. Steam does not require you to pay an ongoing monthly fee just to be able to play online and their regular sales are fantastic for grabbing even recently released titles at substantial discounts. I must admit I have lost a little bit of my initial excitement for the Steam Machines to the lack of a clear vision and plan on Valve’s part and their seeming attitude of “meh, let’s just release it and see what happens” is somewhat disheartening. Still, I do buy into the overall concept and think that the consoles are in for some very rough waters ahead. If the Steam Machines and the Steam Controller can bring the convenience and variety of PC gaming as well as my existing game library into the comfort of my living room, it is a no brainer for me. In the meantime, I will be packing up my 360, upgrading my gaming rig and going back to computer gaming.

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