I’m not a big gamer, but I do have an Xbox 360 and there may be some video evidence on the ‘net of me sampling a game or two at an MVP event a few years back…

These days, much of the console’s use is from my children and, last weekend, my 9 year-old son was keen to buy Minecraft for the Xbox 360 after spotting it on sale in Sainsbury’s.  After coming home and researching, including prices elsewhere, we decided that it was a good deal and I took him back the next day to buy a copy.  One happy little boy.

Unfortunately, when we got home, I was having difficulty installing the game on the Xbox’s hard drive. I do this to avoid wear and tear on the DVD drive in the Xbox, as well as to keep down the noise whilst playing. I expect to supply the optical media to verify that we have a copy (for any piracy purposes) but, from then on, our games run from from the hard drive.

Unfortunately, that option didn’t seem to be available for Minecraft and it seems that it’s the same for all Xbox Live Arcade games. Ludicrous – bizarrely it’s possible to buy the game online and download it to the Xbox via that route (and it would have saved some of my son’s pocket money)!  Unfortunately I don’t think this counts as “faulty” for return to the retailer…