When will Microsoft ditch gamertag?

[horriblebastard]

They're only needed (from users view) to become friends with someone.

And that is one reason why they suck. If I play a Mario Strikers Charged match against some random player, if the match is good I might want to add them to my friends list so we can play again, but no, I can't do that can I? I can't see what other games that person has. I can't send them a message, and so on.

Gamertag=unified friendcode. See, you didn't complain about friendcodes.
In CoD, people would show... As their Miis. Unless there's two guys with same Miis, i don't think there would be any confusion.

This system would be more confusing. You would have a universal friend code that you would not be able to choose as it has to be unique. Then you get to choose any name you like, so you'd end up with 1,000 Daves, 1,000 Petes and so on. How would that work in high score tables? How would it work in multiplayer games where you're not actually playing as the Mii?

Imagine you're playing a multiplayer game with 32 players. What if one clan all looked the same and all had the same name - which is inevitable. What if someone made a Mii that looks just like yours and used the same name? They would have to be uniquely identifiable in some way and then you come down to looking at long strings of random numbers again.

It's clear you haven't played on a 360 much, because if you had, you'd realise that in terms of functionality and online multiplayer if offers MUCH more than the Wii, and for that reason the friend code system just would not work anywhere near as well as gamertags and it would actually lead to more abuse, unless MS removed the ability to send friend requests to people and that wouldn't be a good thing. I can think of more reasons, but I've typed enough already!