Developing the project you speak of would cost billions...in development time, resources, manufacturing, marketing...this is all fairly standard stuff that such a project would have to deal with. I'm not sure why you think it won't cost much to put together, companies aren't exactly giving components away. It's really basic economics.
Oh and public transit is HEAVILY subsidized by tax dollars...so you can complain about pricing, but you're not paying anything close to what it actually costs to run it (unless the UK is unique in this, which I doubt).
Stop complaining about Microsoft. They're not "ramming" anything. If you don't want Vista, don't buy it, or a computer that has it pre-loaded. Simple as that. Get XP...get a Mac...get Linux, etc. Complaining about Live? Again, no one forces you to use it...much like no one forces you to pay for MMOs or any other service. It costs money to run servers and you shouldn't expect companies to shoulder the entire cost of running an online service as full-featured as Live (which consists of a lot more than game match-making).
Also, Microsoft isn't a gaming monopoly. And their computing monopoly only occurs because no one bothered to compete with them in PC operating systems, so they're hardly evil.
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Developing the project you speak of would cost billions...in development time, resources, manufacturing, marketing...this is all fairly standard stuff that such a project would have to deal with. I'm not sure why you think it won't cost much to put together, companies aren't exactly giving components away. It's really basic economics.
Oh and public transit is HEAVILY subsidized by tax dollars...so you can complain about pricing, but you're not paying anything close to what it actually costs to run it (unless the UK is unique in this, which I doubt).
Stop complaining about Microsoft. They're not "ramming" anything. If you don't want Vista, don't buy it, or a computer that has it pre-loaded. Simple as that. Get XP...get a Mac...get Linux, etc.
Complaining about Live? Again, no one forces you to use it...much like no one forces you to pay for MMOs or any other service. It costs money to run servers and you shouldn't expect companies to shoulder the entire cost of running an online service as full-featured as Live (which consists of a lot more than game match-making).
Also, Microsoft isn't a gaming monopoly. And their computing monopoly only occurs because no one bothered to compete with them in PC operating systems, so they're hardly evil.