There’s been rumblings all over the internet about how people are pissed at Microsoft and publishers for the cost of downloadable content on the Xbox 360’s Live Marketplace. I can’t lie, I’ve been one of them for a lot of the content. But I think people are starting to figure out what is good and what is not ( :cough: EA :cough: ). First and foremost, anything that you can get free in a “last-gen” game (I’m using that term now to refer to PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube) should be included for free in a current gen game. So stadiums and alternate uniforms in Madden, golfers and courses in Tiger Woods, etc. Cheat codes should just NEVER be sold, EA needs to get their heads out of their asses.

With all that said, I really like the video strategy guides and their pricing on the Marketplace. Almost all of them are 100 points, and are broken down into different levels for the game. There’s five up for Gears of War, one for each Act of the game. There’s video guides up for Madden, but like most of EA’s content, it’s a joke, so don’t buy it. But in the past couple days, video guides for Splinter Cell Double Agent have been posted. I think this is terrific. Say you get to a point in the game and you’re stuck. No more buying the whole printed strategy guide for a bunch of money, now you can spend $1.25 (100 points) to figure out how to get past that point in a guide from the developers. From what I hear from readers, the quality of the Gears of War and Splinter Cell videos are great and are very very helpful.

This type of content is great for the community and I can only hope developers and Microsoft continue to bring good, fresh content to gamers at a fair price.