If you're a current Xbox Live subscriber and you'd like to upgrade to the Xbox 360, you're going to have to get a Microsoft Passport ID if you don't have one already, otherwise you will not be able to move your current account over to the Xbox 360.

The problem? Passport sucks. It was a failure — and even Microsoft has acknowledged that it was a failure, but in their signature bulldogging style, rather than admitting something is bad and scrapping it, Microsoft is just going to force their most dedicated and loyal customers to use this faulty service.

What's Passport, you ask? There are several answers. The cut-and-dried answer is that it is a service which allows users to store important personal data, such as addresses and credit card numbers on a single login that will follow them as they surf from place to place, thus streamlining online transactions. What's the opinion-laden answer? It's Microsoft's attempt to be in the middle of all online transactions, and that's without mentioning harping on the holes in Microsoft's security that were discovered in the Passport service in its early months a few years ago.

Passport sucks. It's dangerous — people should be MORE careful of their personal information when online, not less — and there was a deeper concern. After all, Microsoft wasn't doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. According to an article from last year's Seattle Times:

As for major merchants, they were concerned about letting Microsoft stand between them and their customers. They feared the company that controlled more than 90 percent of the world's desktop computers might one day charge a toll on e-commerce transactions.
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In the end, old-fashioned competition may have doomed Passport.

Even those who initially supported it dropped the service, like eBay. And after that announcement, Microsoft was supposed to be abandoning Passport.

But wait! It can be salvaged, say the boys at Microsoft. What if we — wait for it — force every Live user to use Microsoft Passport!

And voila... they're back in business. What's worse? From the instructions offered on the help page on the Xbox site, it looks like Passport will now be used to handle billing. See for yourself:

1. Gather the same information that you used to sign up for your Xbox Live account: your name, ZIP code, phone number, and the last four digits of your credit card number. You can get all this from Account Management in the Xbox Dashboard. Make sure all the information is exactly as you entered it originally in the Xbox Dashboard.
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2. Get a .NET Passport hotmail account. If you have a hotmail account, you're all set. If you don't, it's easy--and free--to set one up. Just go to www.passport.net and follow the directions to set up a new account.
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3. Log in with your Passport. Just follow the prompts using the info from the credit-card screen to complete the link.

Otherwise, why would it be linked to the credit card screen? And why do this in the first place? What was wrong with the OLD system? Except for the fact that I found the interface on the first Xbox very difficult to deal with when it came to changing or updating information on your account, since there was no keyboard, it worked pretty well. So why change now?