Hacked!!

PS3 owners may have had to deal with a major hacking issue lately, but us 360 owners aren't immune!

A few days ago I noticed that all of my Xbox Live menus were in Russian, and yesterday I received three e-mail notifications from Xbox Live Marketplace, notifying me that I had successfully purchased 10,000 microsoft points and changed my account to Russia instead of the US. Yikes!

So we're getting new credit cards and my Xbox Live account has been frozen until they sort out the details.

I have always been somewhat against consoles going online. It leaves room for incomplete, buggy games to be released ("Whatever. We'll just release a patch later."), encourages companies to require internet connection for their games to be played (Lookin' at you, Bioware!) and also leaves gamers open to attack from hackers.

For me, playing video games is a solo experience. The rare times I play with others is limited to couch co-op. But my preference is still mostly to go it alone in a dark corner of my house. So online consoles have been more of a nuisance to me than a benefit.

I'm not troubled by my account being frozen. The game I'm playing now doesn't require an internet connection. But it's pretty annoying to have to change our credit card information with all the various places we have registered our credit card.