>the price of the games, which nearly always seem to be around ?45, that put's me off.
They did start fairly high, but prices have been dropping somewhat, especially if you don't want to get the absolutely latest game (you should be able to get Project Gotham Racing for around ?20 these days).
It's worth looking around a bit too - I haven't paid more than ?35 for any of the Xbox games that I've bought, and most of em have been around the ?30 mark.
Hopefully, as we're approaching a year since the console came out over here, Microsoft will institute something along the lines of Sony's Platinum range for older games.