Here they come... hear them? Its the sound of the Anti-halo folks drawn to the open flame...

I guess it's a good thing I don't use Xbox Live. :3

Kudos @ using a Far Side comic. lol

let me start. *ahem* i knew this was going to happen roaroaroaroaroar

I would just like to announce that the new flood are eleventy billion times better than the old flood. that is all.

It's not as bad as it was earlier tonight. There are still matchmaking rounds occurring.

However, you can't even sign into xbox.com anymore - they took the utility right off the page!

Can't speak for the updates, but I've been playing all night just fine.

Is that the pic I sent in 25 minutes ago? If so, that was fast. If not, then, well, great minds think alike.

I'm guessing Live will be in a state of sputter for at least the next week. Oh well. At least we're not paying for the service. We are? Really? That sucks.

fresh air! ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!

I must say i am impressed, over 100,000 players at once on Halo 3 tonight, plus over a million in the past 24 hours, while still keeping every other game up and running.

Sure if might be starting to chug, but when the next best console online service (PSN) couldn't handle 10K concurrent on Warhawk and 100K total sales the first week i find it hard to be critical of XBL.

at least ur 360s work mines broke & i have a messed up limited edition

@Killtacular:
had a problem with the marketplace in halo3 but other then that games play fine also.

been playing all day...not one issue.

Is kotaku still going to do that xbox 360 live name exchange thing by any chance?

FINALLY! A Halo 3 post!

I was beginning to worry . . .

R U really telling the truth? Since yesterday @ around 10pm est my friends and I have been on with tons of ranked and non ranked games and only about 4-5 of the over 50+ games we've played were smooth and solid. those od times were when the connection of someone's connection was bad also if someone jumped out mid battle. So I really wonder how many "real e-mails of no connection Kotaku got" here comes the (FOX News Spin) information you want us to believe..?

One of my favorite Far Sides!

Also... Not surprised. I can only imagine the volume of people playing online. I know if I were interested in Halo 3, I'd be doing pretty much ONLY online.

@mphz: If you didn't know there are 2-3 times more people on live since for the next 3 days everyone on live who has only a silver account will get free gold service to enjoy some halo 3 greatness. YES..! If you only have a silver account go ahead and log on for some multi-player action.

I've been playing 4 player co-op since I got home from work 4 hours ago without a hitch. 2 of the guys I'm playing with are from other states too. By the way so far the game has been kicking ass. I tried some multiplayer on that sand dune looking map. Omg so awesome!

@ShirtNinja:

Halo 3 is the news today in the gaming world. The only other game news has been Sex Pistols reforming to record a remake of their own Anarchy in the U.K. for Guitar Hero III. And who wants to talk about the Sex Pistols? Anyone? No takers? Okay. That's what I thought.

"Xbox Live should be free"

A friend of mine brought over Halo 3 for some three player fragfests. After deciding that we needed to hop onto LIVE and find some matches that way. Since none of us had an account, we ran to the store and I picked up a subscription card. Hurried home, tried to enter in the code, only to find that LIVE was acting up, and not allowing me to access any of the services. So that was tons of fun!

After a few more rounds, we managed to get it working, and played a 4 player slayer round. And then my friends had to leave. So now I'm left here, debating whether or not to run out to the store and buy myself a copy...

Wha...? Halo 3 is out now? When did that happen?

Bah, doesn't matter, my 360 is on the floor next to me unplugged and awaiting its coffin.

I'm not surprised they're having difficulties, but a little surprised that they're not a lot worse.

The community seems to be getting mixed results. Some are having a problem and some aren't. I've played quite a bit today and haven't had a single problem. I wonder if location is a factor. Also some of the problem might be coming from the fact that all Xbox Live accounts are getting free Gold access for the next few days thanks to Best Buy.

@ShirtNinja:

To be fair, nothing else is happening in gaming today. No one wanted to compete with this juggernaut for publicity.

For your entertainment, I give you Real Life Comics take on the big day.

this is precisely why I chose to not open my game until this weekend. That and a major project at work. Damn legal research. Screw the constitution! Give me the United States of HALO!

I sold my 360 about 2 months ago.

I hate myself now.

zomg my predictions were correct!

@Doshu: Exactly. Guess that beta was for a reason, huh?

Okay nice. This issue needs to be brought to light in order to put pressure on to fix the problem. Thank you. Its a bit bigger then you might think.

Haven't noticed any problems with gameplay online or even logging into Live, however the website xbox.com is certainly down and was acting a little funny earlier. Can still track achievements online though.

@YodaGoneMad: When millions of users pay $50 a year for the best online service you would expect more from Microsoft than being as crappy as usual. But since they are, it's hard to be very critical to the next best one (PSN). ;)

I noticed a while ago that it was taking a long time to send and receive messages to my buddies playing Halo 3, but other than that I didn't see or feel anything bad. Matchmaking, co-op, and friends list all working fine (if a bit slower than normal)

So yeah, kudos to Microsoft for actually being ready for the onslaught.

With me not being able to play online,cant go on marketplace...but friends list is ok

for me that means xbox live is down!!!

Meh.. Im getting Halo today and wont even be able to take it online? That sucks man. lol

doing tech support for an ISP, myself and my colleagues were receiving tons of calls about xbox live today... I didn't know this at the time, but that's because they have gaming a blog sites blocked... but this was pretty much what I was telling people just based on an educated guess... and it sucked being stuck at work while people would call in and say they couldn't get halo working online... my copy of halo was at home!!

@SYCODUDE:

I agree, where does the money go, not towards dedicated servers

Well, I've noticed the "My Xbox" sign in thingy, is gone from Xbox.com, is this related?

I was able to play with some friends and family on the multiplayer campaign mode but the dlc stuff it out of service. Still had a blast. I think that they're pooling all the server resources just for Halo multiplayer gaming right now until more capacity can be added.

@slomo788: Hey for $60 bucks you can get
13-month Xbox Live Gold membership
$20 Xbox 360 Game Rebate Coupon
Xbox 360 Headset
Xbox Live Arcade game: Bankshot Billiards 2
200 Microsoft® Points

Not too bad. The most popular PC game has 60,000 people on-line at one time (Half-Life) with Halo 3 there are hundreds of thousands of people on-line at one time. For 5-bucks a month I thinks it's great.

As far as dedicated servers go, does anyone have any figures or live information on the number of players currently on the RFoM and Warhawk servers? Are free dedicated servers the standard set by Sony for all multiplayer games or can a company, such as EA, charge clan members $60 a month for having their own ranked servers, ala BF series?

@JoopTang: I entirely agree, and it was precisely my point. You get what you pay for. And there's another important factor. XBL is a mature concept from a major software company. PSN is a young product from a hardware company. You can't expect them to perform as well as Microsoft, objectively. But so far, I have to say, Sony has been doing a great job, getting feedback, and ameliorating the service as much as they can. We get more demos, games and stuff. I still feel for Europe though. Wonder why the updates are so weak there every week.

@JoopTang: Also I'm not sure it was the servers the problem for Warhawk, it was more a problem with the firmware. They set up a big PS3 "farm" just for this game, not to mention that you can use your own console as a server. I think it's fixed now though. (I don't own the game).

@Plunkett: Guess that beta was for a reason, huh?

They always are.

Unfortunately, I've been part of a few betas where the problems weren't properly identified and fixed. It can be very hard to adequately replicate the "live" conditions (no pun intended) in your tests and to get quality feedback when there are problems. At least with consoles, you have the benefit of common hardware.
Funnily enough, I'm going through this issue right now. Our test environment is not an adequate representation of the production environment.

In my expirence Warhawk is rock solid, GRAW 2 is pretty solid, rainbow six was shite.

I've found with Gears I have to be on an Australian host or I'm pretty much screwed, not a Halo fan so i've only been online a couple of times with H2 & i've yet to go online with halo3 (I'll no doubt get smashed by the people who have been playing for years now).

Overall I've had a better expirence on the PSN except there seems to be a lot less people with mic's.

The one thing I've found the same on both is the Racist, ignorant & people who use the anonimity to be rude dickheads.

Also 12 to 14 year olds calling me a Fuckhead cocksucker

@sycodude: It would then be like the PSN..useless :p Like that old saying goes, "You get what you pay for".

@y2julio: yeh, considering this post is about xbox live struggling, that $40 a month is well worth it :P

but im not surprised any big game that requires the internet usually messes the system up, think back to steam and hl2/css launch or when wow and expansions came out. Ah well all will be sorted soon im sure

It doesn't matter.

Amazon f&cked up my order. It won't ship until Friday. If I'm lucky, I'll spend Columbus Day weekend bragging about how Columbus was Jewish (yup, he's one of ours) while playing Halo 3 for as many straight hours as possible.

FWIW: I didn't order it from Amazon. My girlfriend did last month for my birthday. She also got me Bioshock, which arrived in short order. She's not so up to date with the video games and wants me to find out why there is no Arkanoid on XBLA. That's the killer app for her: Arkanoid.

And since she ordered it on her Amazon account, I can't check the status.)

Good thing you pay for that "great" service with no lag and all. . .

dashboard update? who what when? i know it updated some time last week, but i had nothing yesterday and i was ok online.

I finally got a 360 yesterday to go along with my pre-order of Halo 3 like many other people I'm sure. But oh man when I turned on my 360 and tried to set up Live I was baffled. It said all my connections were good but then flat out rejected downloading updates. There were no error codes or anything. I thought there was something wrong with my shitty DSL connection or my router. I updated my router's firmware, reset it, checked settings, all kinds of shit. Tried it with the wireless adapter, wired - no dice. I finally went into irc with the xblive gang at the site I frequent. I was told that lots of other people were experiencing the same thing so I decided that I'd go to sleep and try again in the morning. Looks like that was the case and I was able to download the updates when I woke up. I'm really happy because I was thinking my brand new 360 was messed up or something. Not a great day one experience but I'm pretty forgiving.