The title says it all.  Way to go, Microsoft.  That’s why we pay you the big bucks.

A few weeks ago, it was announced that the Xbox Originals are no more. Remember? It’s where you can download original Xbox games to your 360 for much more than you would pay at GameStop or a pawn shop. In honor of Max Payne 3′s announcement, for example, they re-released the first two games at the standard Xbox Originals price of 1200 Microsoft points each ($15). You can buy both Max Payne and Max Payne 2 from Gamstop for $12 combined. But then you wouldn’t get all the achievement points you can get only on 360! Oh wait… Xbox Originals don’t offer those. Major Nelson said it was, “to preserve the integrity of the original gaming experience”. And yet Galaga, Pac-Man, and Paperboy have achievements. That doesn’t really seem fair, does it?

Another problem with the Originals is that most of them will steal about a gig of hard drive space. I only have a 20-gig hard drive on my 360 (big ones were too expensive!). That’s a lot of wasted space. I would rather have the game take up space on my shelf. There’s a lot more room, and then visitors can revel at my geek-tastic wall shrine!

The last issue is the same one facing Wii gamers with their Virtual Consoles – the good games that were re-released for download are already owned by the people that wanted them. People aren’t going to pay another $15 to play an exact duplicate of an Xbox game they completed 6 years ago. That’s three times the price of nostalgia of an NES game on Wii. For 400 Microsoft points, you might have yourself a deal. Triple that… probably not.

Still, it was nice seeing some underappreciated gems like Psychonauts and Dreamfall getting a little bit more attention a few years too late. Maybe it will get the three people that downloaded them to try something obscure and interesting in the future? We can only hope.

Sometimes, after you play a 360 for a month, it breaks. Ok, almost all the time. But Microsoft is really good about it. You mail it in and they’ll fix it for free, and you go without games for a month. Of course, there’s still the Wii, collecting dust on the shelf. When you realize that you’ve already beaten all five good Wii games (you know – the ones Nintendo made), you get sad again. You go to GameStop and you buy an original Xbox for $50. You play KOTOR, Riddick, Stranger’s Wrath, and Deus Ex 2. You realize that the Xbox wasn’t just a bigger, less successful PS2. You discover that you won’t be sad and gameless for a month. Yay.

Is this Microsoft’s master plan? By not being completely backwards compatible, they encourage you to keep your original XXLbox even though it doubles as a TV stand. Also, pawn shops sell old Xbox games for $5. Kinda makes you never want to go to Best Buy and spend $200 on Rock Band again. You find out that Mirror’s Edge is just a polished version of Breakdown and Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel is just Baldur’s Gate with guns and a different setting. Oh well, there’s probably originality out there somewhere. Or not. There used to be, but our NES’s aren’t even plugged in any more. Whatev.