MS never meant XBL Points to "mislead"

US Xbox bigwig Aaron Greenberg has explained that Microsoft Points were never meant to "mislead" customers when buying content on Xbox Live.

Unlike Sony's policy on the PlayStation Network, downloadable content on Xbox 360 is not priced in real currency, but rather Microsoft Points (MSP), of which one is worth £0.0085 or €0.012.

Interestingly, Microsoft dropped this proprietary currency for Xbox Live Games On Demand, a service that sells full Xbox 360 titles for download for £20.

"We never intended to ever mislead people," Greenberg told G4TV. "We want to be transparent about it, and so it is something that we're looking at.

"How can we be more transparent and let people see it in actual dollars? You've got to think that we have one service that we're offering around the world. The nice thing about Points is that no matter if you're on the JPY or the EUR or the USD - something that's 200 Points is 200 Points everywhere around the world."

"There's more technical complexities to being able to put local prices in," he added. "You have to do that for every product in every country and you then have to deal with currency fluctuations. So there's some challenges to that, but we absolutely did it with the Games On Demand, response has been good and absolutely it's something we're looking at doing."

Greenberg also addressed the Xbox Live Friends list limit of 100, and revealed that he too finds the restriction annoying.

"Exactly when [a fix] happens I can't say because there's some technical requirements tied to it. But I can tell you that, just like consumers, I share the same frustration and I, too, want more than 100 friends, and so know that we all want that and that we are working on getting that fixed," he said.