Microsoft Points purchased from a retail store can only be applied to accounts registered to the same country where the retail store is located. The only exception is the 2100 point card (available in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa), which is universal throughout those regions.

Xbox 360: Get the Points

The original Xbox® and Xbox LIVE® introduced the concept of premium content to Xbox LIVE subscribers, but there was always a catch—no credit card, no premiums.

The folks behind Xbox 360™ and the new Xbox LIVE have a different idea: Microsoft® Points, the new coin of the Xbox LIVE Marketplace realm. Microsoft Points is a new universal system that works across international borders and is even available if you don't have a credit card. Here's how they work.

How Do I Get Points?
Microsoft Points let everyone in on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace action. First, though, you need to get some. Purchasing Points is like putting money into a special account that you can use on Xbox LIVE Marketplace. You can buy them online from the Marketplace itself by using your credit card, but if you don't have a credit card, no worries. You can also pick up gift cards at hundreds of participating retail locations and use the number on that card to buy your Points.

You can also get Points as part of the Xbox LIVE Gold Pack, available at participating retailers. Points will also be awarded to users for various promotions in the future. It's a simple thing, but it opens up all of the amazing premium content on Xbox LIVE to a whole new community of gamers.

Why Do I Want to Use Points?
Points let everyone on Xbox LIVE—Silver and Gold members—pick up content to enhance their entertainment experience, opening up the Marketplace to everyone in the world that is connected to Xbox LIVE. But the big deal here is that Points allow what technical types call "micro-transactions."

On the original Xbox LIVE, transactions had to be around five dollars U.S., the minimum for most credit cards. But with Microsoft Points, the price for most anything—maps, skins, levels, demos, and more—can be much lower than that. That's a big deal. For example, say you want to get one of the new maps for your favorite shooter, but you're not that interested in a few of the others. Lucky for you, Marketplace can offer each map individually for just a few points. Now that's savings.

What Else Can I Get With Points?
Points can get you more than just maps and other multiplayer-focused features. For example, odds are very good that some role-playing games will offer individual pieces of equipment, weapons, and other goodies that you can redeem Points for in the Xbox LIVE Marketplace, even though it may be an offline, single-player game.

In the future, you might even be able to redeem your Points for real-world objects, like hardware accessories for your Xbox 360 (note that this is speculative—at first, Marketplace will deal in downloads only).

What About User-to-User Transactions?
Though you won't be able to do it for a while yet, Microsoft eventually wants to enable Xbox LIVE users to buy and sell user-created content, which could prove to be the heart of the "micro-transaction" system. So, hypothetically speaking, I could create a new skin for Project Gotham Racing® 3 and use that skin when I win a tournament viewed by hundreds of gamers in spectator mode.

Big champion that I am, everyone who sees my skin when I'm racing wants it. I can then (again, hypothetically) post it up for sale in the Marketplace at, say, a dime's worth of points. Other users can get the skin for the price of a piece of candy, and I earn more points in exchange.

Article by Ben Barker

• Dev interview: Xbox Live functionality.
• Xbox Live: Gamer profile.
• Xbox Live: Friends list.