Before you read this I want to make 2 things very clear:

1. Never written a blog before I just wanted to write down these thoughts, so bare with me (assuming anyone even reads this thing which I doubt)

2. I am not trying to start a console war, I'm just writing as a very aggravated customer of Xbox.

I've been a fan of Xbox ever since I first played Halo but once I got Xbox Live, and started playing online, it was a whole new experience for me that I never looked back from. That was about 8 years ago, since then we've seen a lot of changes and yes it does annoy me to have to go three or four damn pages just go get to the game section of Live but in the end of the day I still liked playing a game on the Xbox. However, with Steam being the craze that it is I was starting to wonder if I being ripped off by console gaming? It seemed like PC gamers had more options for price and could get really great deals, while I didn't. And yes I do play PC games on my computer but I don't really have that great of a gaming computer. So I just overlooked it and said well it's not like any other consoles are offering crazy deals. In walks Sony.

First it started with their free games which was already making me jealous of people who had Playstation Plus but I shrugged it off because even though it would be awesome to get free stuff it was nothing I was falling off of my chair over. Then it was PS+ members getting $6 off of a game they reserve off of PSN (not all but it's def a step in the right direction) which is pretty good so I started to get really annoyed why am I paying MS all this money to just play games online, what do they give me? I don't use any apps, most Gold Member only games come to PC any or even PSN, and the discounts they have are terrible. What so I get to use Bing and Youtube? Who cares.

So even with all my anger I was said "Whatever MS will probably come up with something soon right?" Well they did so far, and this is why I'm writing. For those who don't know you get money back on games you buy over the Marketplace now, if you sign up online. How much you ask? Well it depends on your Gamer Score which is already kind of odd but it's not ridicules only 25k for the max reward. Which is 2% back every month on every game you buy online and a gift on your birthday month... Now let me put some context behind this in case this doesn't insult you. PS+ member get $6 back for reserving new games that cost $60, you would have to spend $500.00 dollars to get $10.00 dollars from this deal, with the highest reward pack! So I got it to see what the deal was for the birthday since my birthday is the 18th of October and I got my reward. 20 Microsoft Points ... 80 MS is a dollar, 20 is a quarter. I've been a member for 8 years, bought tons of games and been a pretty loyal customer and they give me 25 cents. With this "deal", the amount I spend on the Market Place, and the 200 points I get for buying another year of Live I will maybe get $5 dollars a year if that from Microsoft, while reserving 1 game with Sony saves me $6.

This pissed me off more than anything else, I would rather get nothing and wait for them to actually come up with a good deal rather than try to give me a damn quarter. Who knows maybe a week from now they'll come up with something amazing and I'll be completely on board again, or maybe not.

Between Sony and Steam, if Microsoft doesn't step it up they'll lose customers by the time this new generation of Consoles come out and I will be one of them, and just like when I first started playing Live, I'll never look back.

EDIT: Thanks for everyone who read this I never expected over 1000 people to read this blog (at the same time didn't know I could post it on forums so obviously that helped lol). Everyone has their own opinion and they are entitled to that and I always respect it, even if I disagree with you. Thanks for the taking the time to read my thoughts.

- Ozzie Gonzalez