Xbox store - UGH!

[QueBert]

So, I want to buy 2 games, of course I have bad luck though. Both come up with "redeem code" in the store on my Xbox One. So I Google this and I can use a gift card to buy them, great, expect I don't have a gift card. Also the price doesn't come up, so even if I wanted to buy a gift card so I could get a code to use I don't even know how much to buy it for. I bought 2 other backwards compatible games last night and all I had to do was click buy now on my Xbox and select my payment method. I suppose having this work like that (simple) for every title across the store is a silly idea right? Well it doesn't work like that, and who knows if they'll ever fix it. I'm sure they have some reasoning why you gotta jump thru all these hoops to buy certain games.

I did Google and apparently you can buy them on xbox.com on a PC without the Xbox gift card mumbo jump and it'll pop up on your Xbox. SUPER! I go and it shows $4.95 for the 1st one, so I add the game to my cart and start to check out, I don't want to use Paypal though, so I click on the button to change my payment method and select my Visa. BOOM! Nope, daamit! After I do this and click continue it goes back to the order page and shows PAY PAL for my payment method again WTF! I change the method again and back on the order screen it's showing PAY PAL again, awesome sauce! I close Chrome and re-open and start over with the same results. I'm sure I can go into my account and change my default payment method, but why the hell are you making it so complicated to buy something?

So I think "hummm... maybe MS doesn't like Chrome" So I open Explorer for the 1st time in like 5 years and go to Xbox.com. The same game hub page or whatever it's called is showing the "redeem a code" button.

The 2nd game I want to buy is only showing "redeem a code" regardless of what browser I use. AWESOME SAUCE! So even if I can change my payment method, I still can't buy this 2nd title without a code to redeem. And I still don't know how much the game is, it's in the "backwards compatibility sale" category, but that doesn't tell me much.

Now since I've gotten my Xbox One I've stumbled upon maybe a dozen Xbox 360 backwards compatible titles that do this same sh*t. Why do they make it so hard to buy a damn game? And why haven't they fixed this? I know it only effects a small # of titles, but I've came across it for like 7 games I've was ready to buy. And if you're going to make me buy a gift card to get a code to buy the game, can you at least list the daam price of the game?

Sorry for this lame rant, but MS frustrates the crap out of me sometimes. I'm off to try and buy these 2 games (Jet Set Radio + Mickey's Illusions... something or other)

 

[shortylickens]

I only buy the Forza games and never had a problem yet.

Maybe try Edge instead of Explorer?

 

[darkswordsman17]

What games were they? There's a couple of games where I don't think you can buy licenses for at all any more. Alan Wake I think is one? If you already bought it it'll still show up in your library on places like Steam and you can redownload it and play it, but you can no longer buy a license for it. I want to say there's a couple of other games that are similar (I think it has something to do with the rights owner not selling any more licenses or something). There was also that one game that got recalled (Too Human? The developer sued Epic, and it ended up with the developer getting sued for having stolen assets or something in the game, so they issued a stop sale and recall, although I'd guess you shouldn't be able to download that at all).

Welcome to the world of digital assets and licensing, where even if you "own" something you might not actually get to own it. Frankly I'm surprised it hasn't been a worse issue.

 

[nakedfrog]

What games were they? There's a couple of games where I don't think you can buy licenses for at all any more. Alan Wake I think is one? If you already bought it it'll still show up in your library on places like Steam and you can redownload it and play it, but you can no longer buy a license for it. I want to say there's a couple of other games that are similar (I think it has something to do with the rights owner not selling any more licenses or something). There was also that one game that got recalled (Too Human? The developer sued Epic, and it ended up with the developer getting sued for having stolen assets or something in the game, so they issued a stop sale and recall, although I'd guess you shouldn't be able to download that at all).

Welcome to the world of digital assets and licensing, where even if you "own" something you might not actually get to own it. Frankly I'm surprised it hasn't been a worse issue.

Yeah, this was my suspicion, titles you can't properly buy anymore but they still have to support existing copies.
They could definitely do with some kind of asterisk on the page explaining the situation or something though.

 

[Skel]

I don't discount you're having issues, but I can say I've never once seen what you speak of. Not sure if I'm just lucky or not. I'd be really interested in seeing what titles you were attempting to get so I can see if I can recreate what you speak of.

 

[d0l0mite]

The games were Jet Set Radio & Mickey's Castle of Illusion, I get the replies here, but both are currently on the main Xbox screen under the the "backwards comp ability sale" section of the store tab. You'd think MS would make this easy. Just for SNG I clicked on other games on this sale page and it seems about a third of them "redeem a code" way to make money MS.

I figured it out, had to remove Paypal as a payment type and it worked. BUT, I had to do this from my PC. I suppose I probably could have done it on my Xbox using Edge. I doubt a lot of non techie people would even understand to do that though. I also discovered 1 of them (Jet Set) would come up for sale on the Xbox.com store page on my PC, but under the MS store page it says "redeem a code" The sketchy thing is you can get to both pages from the same main page, so one wrong click and you'd be in the MS store where you can't buy it.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Jet Set Radio $4.99
https://marketplace.xbox.com/en-us/Product/Jet-Set-Radio/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258411247


Castle of Illusion starring Micky Mouse $7.49
https://marketplace.xbox.com/en-us/...ey-Mouse/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802584112c7