The Official Microsoft political organ Gamerscoreblog announced special prices for Lumines Live! starting Jan 24. Those generous fools at Live will allow Gold Members to download a free skin, Heavenly Star, for a limited time between Jan 24 and Feb 21. They have also lowered the prices on the Vs CPU and Puzzle/Mission packs.

Lumines was one of the few games I actually liked for the PSP. When it was announced that Q Entertainment was bringing the game to Live I was pretty excited. I must say I was quite disappointed to find the 19 or so dollar Live version quite crippled. Missing was much of the functionality of the original PSP game. You had to pay extra to get each little bit. While a big fan of the game I found the practice pretty revolting and decided to vote with my wallet. I guess many people felt the same way since the price drop seems to indicate many people did not end up buying the extra packs.

Am I the only one who would prefer to pay for a large game at an expensive price than say be nickled and dimed, but get the first small portion cheaply?

I'd rather pay for the game once rather than buying pieces as well. The only time I don't mind paying more over time are when playing good MMORPG's (like WoW). Granted, I'd rather not pay a monthly fee on that either, but the game is worth it to me. It's probably the only game I've ever put so many hours into without getting bored of the game. Most games get boring withing about 20 hours of gameplay for me. :(

I buy games (not ones with activation) I like, not hire them. Hiring a game for full price (or for even higher price like in this case) is madness.

As far as I know one can't *buy* anything from M$ Live. One just hires DRM crippled stuff.

M$ just showed us that PlaysForSure actually means "PlaysForSure but not with Zune". Welcome to hire all that music once again...

I'm with you on the pay first and get everything deal. This is why I don't like mmmoorrrpppgogo?mmm's, and it's the reason I tried Guild Wars (of course I kinda got bored but I think I'm anti-social in the gaming-world).