All online purchasing systems should have a rating system that is sortable. I'm looking at you, damn Apple Apps Store! Grr. The part I don't understand is removing the points system.

Psychologically, the points system makes it so that the user cares less about how much they are spending, by converting the money to "Monopoly money". It is especially effective because there is not a 1-to-1 ratio between the $$ and the points value. This is especially obvious when someone travels in a foreign country -- it takes a while to get used to spending money and internalizing how valuable each denomination is, and it's easy to overspend in that gap.

Additionally, when you buy the points first, that's revenue that MS can list right away, even if you don't spend it on anything for another 10 weeks, so it has a business advantage. It also lets parents buy points for their kids as presents in one exchange.

The only advantage I see to removing the points system is that you remove one step in the purchasing process, in case you are low in points. In all other scenarios, the amount of time it takes is the same, right? Especially if you are saving your credit card info on their servers or locally on your drive?

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