360 Virtual Fireplace will have you asking, “Why the fuck did I pay 400 points for this?”

Christmas with my family is a little strange. My parents get up around 5 am, excitedly trying to pull my 24-year-old sister and me out of bed yelling “Santa was here!” Five hours later, we gather around the Christmas tree and my mom insists that we put on the cable channel with the burning Yule log. Why she wants to watch a looping video of flames on Christmas with cheesy music playing in the background, I have no idea.

But now you too can share in this confusing holiday tradition by buying the “Virtual Fireplace” off of Xbox Live. That’s right, for $5 you can have endless burning log fun! You can watch it burn and…well…that’s pretty much it. User SniperED007 has made what is undoubtedly the prettiest, most expensive screensaver currently available on the Xbox.

Among the many comments on Major Nelson’s blog, a few anonymous comments stood out as particularly enjoyable:

Nelson, how about fixing the HDMI and UPnP problems as a Christmas present?

I know it’s not your fault, but this is getting ridiculous. It’s been more than a month since the NXE was released and some people can’t play because of those problems.

When can I get Virtual Rotisserie Chicken?

There’s actually a few bugs with the fireplace. At times (which I believe you can make it happen right away by pressing the shoulder buttons and LT [I was pressing those buttons when it happened, so I don't know for sure]) the fire will actually be coming upsidedown from the chiminey rather than the firepit.

Also, the demo sucks because after a minute it bothers you about buying the “game”

I think the problem at the heart of this is the idea that XNA developers must price their games between 200 and 800 Microsoft points. In the comments section, many expressed that they would be interested in buying the “game” if it had been priced at a more reasonable 80 MS points. Others pointed out that similar apps like iYule.tv make this fireplace function available (not only for Apple devices but for Xbox 360 as well) for a similar price–with a percentage of the proceeds going to charity. It also boasts a score composed by the creator, a feature which is sorely lacking in the XNA version.

I’m sure it took SniperED007 a good amount of time to create this “community game,” however this seems like a pet project more than a polished game or program worthy of being sold. For $5, I would expect a little more…anything really. I have to raise an eyebrow at the supposed glitches in this bit of programming as well; it confuses me as to how such a glitch made it into the final product.

Considering the economy crisis the world is suffering through, not many are likely to buy this. Not that everyone can anyway–Xbox Live Community games are still only available in the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain.