King Gunz

guybers

I know it could be both. I'm HW and my GF is SW. We both work in tech and we've been having some heating debates over this.
But my point is neither the suits or "E" are being completely honest or up front with us. I know companies are in it to win it $$$ but I don't like being kept in the dark or lied to. I guess with my outlook I'll never make me a billion dollars, but then again I prefer to kept my "soul" and treat people right.

Unbound

Sloopydrew

eug_is_huge

GorbyGipper

Fuzi Lojak

I've downloaded demos and videos, played online. No account recovery but other than that, it's been smooth.

Of couse I'm in Canada and our internet services are pretty much 50 yrs ahead of the US. ;)

Leathersoup

Outages happen. I'm in the server hosting industry and I understand that. But to keep quiet and disrespect your customers by keeping them in the dark is unforgivable. You MUST keep your customers informed with every intimate detail of the issue and what you are doing to fix it.

Microsoft FAILED MISERABLY at that.

I and everyone reading this may have learned about the outage from blogs and forum posts, but all that was idle speculation... and it still is! What Microsoft should have done was immediately warned XBox Live customers over the XBox Live service itself of the potential for connection issues, their plan to fix it, and an ETA on that fix.

mobbo

heretrix

baked ham

AqueousBeef

lostalaska

Whatever floats your boat. I have no problem admitting that I made an error.Thanks for giving me the chance.

heretrix

smeee

krunkjuice

But rather than make that assumption, I'd rather just deduce that you're an irrational douchebag for making the assumption about me. You don't know me. I just got a Playstation 3 within the last couple of months. I'm stating a fact, comparing the two services. Oh, but if my findings state that the PSN is close to Xbox Live in terms of feature-set, but trumps it, in my experience, in terms of reliability and COST (because it is free and has no advertisements)... that makes me a poser fanboy. Thanks for the assumption about my allegiences, but I just call it like I see it. I've owned an Xbox 360 since September of 2006. No, I did not get my system at launch, but I have had the system since just before the PS3 came out, and it took me until the PS3 price-cut late last year to give the PS3 a shot. It was too expensive and I didn't see the games I wanted for it until then. By the end of the year, the price was right, and I saw games I wanted, and I do not regret my purchase. I love all of my systems (I also have a Wii, since launch), but I clearly see the flaws in the Xbox Live service when I compare it up to the Playstation 3 service. The only reason I even still have Xbox Live is because, in my opinion, you just can't beat Halo 3 for online multiplayer.

Otherwise, I'd be content to just play Bioshock and Mass Effect. Anyway, if you choose to believe I don't even have Xbox Live, go right ahead, but to further attempt to prove my legitimacy, I welcome you to check out my GamerTag on Xboxlive.com, it's Evil Trash.

baked ham

Dude, get a clue. Lag has always been around. Even in PC gaming.

heretrix

This basically says it all about you. This isn't about your unrealistic expectations of XBL and Microsoft. This is just about you being a poser ass PSN fanboy. You probably don't even have XBL.

heretrix

krunkjuice

All the while, I look over at my PS3, and I can play all my online games with no problems, and I never have to pay an extra dime to do so. Hmmmmm...

I just don't understand why some get mad at people like me for thinking this is ridiculous, rather than putting a couple of thoughts toward the situation to realize that we're not really getting that much of a value from Microsoft, as per the cost. I see my vocal attitude on this matter as a benefit to the future of the network because, maybe - just maybe - Microsoft will realize that just because people are paying for their service doesn't mean they're completely satisfied. It could lead to improvements. And there's definitely room for improvement.

Let me ask a question, here. If someone just got a 360 and signed up, and for the first 3 weeks (it could even be the entire first month) of their service, they are met with hassles, down-time, inconsistincies, lagged gameplay, dropped players, etc... are they going to think their money was well spent? Probably not, right? Well, maybe it would've just been better for everyone if Microsoft had had some kind of system preventing new users from signing up until they tooled up for the job, that way they don't pay for something they can't use to its full effectiveness for close to a month, resulting in a crappy first impression of the service, and existing users who've already paid don't end up paying for a length of service that is sub-standard. Maybe that wouldn't be easily done in theory, or even a hot idea... I dunno. Just thinking. That's all.

baked ham

@bobbiac: You say "[do you think] servers, infrastructure, CUSTOMER SERVICE... cost nothing?" ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!!! For god's sake, did you even read what I wrote? I'm talking PRECISELY about servers & infrastructure and the costs that they should've realized they'd be required to spend in order to keep Xbox Live running with a new surge of users from the holidays. That's my point. Customer Service expenses shouldn't be taking up the majority of your income when you have a responsibility to keep the infrastructure sound. They did not keep their infrastructure sound, supposedly due to the claim that they were not expecting so many people to be using Xbox Live during the holiday season. That's on them. That's their stupidity. They've sure been taking them time to get their infrastructure up to speed, haven't they? They're still not there, and it's been weeks now, but they're still collecting people's money.

baked ham

The service hasn't been static. Your $50 a year gets you more and more on Live with each passing quarter. They've been improving the service.

Also, I wouldn't imagine ANY online service out there would have the capability to handle every single subscriber at once. There's a total number of subscribers, and your normal peak number at any given time. You generally want enough room to handle your peak and then some.

If they had the capacity to handle every subscriber at once, I'd imagine we'd be paying more per head.

GorbyGipper

UncleScrotar

UncleScrotar

It can be both a server issue and multi-tiered, you know.

GorbyGipper

It happens.

I'm going to try to get onto Live again tonight. If I can't, maybe play something local, maybe take a night off.

If it's not 100% too much longer, I'll get annoyed, though.

GorbyGipper

onejayc

*POSSIBLE SPOILER*

To avoid ruining it for anyone who HASN'T figured it out or gone to gamefaqs, I rot-13ed the text below. Copy the text below, go to www.rot13.com, paste it in the box, then press the shiny button.

Nsgre qbvat gung bar dhrfg, lbh NYFB pna cvpx hc n avsgl jrncba, juvpu vf bar bs gur irel srj va gur tnzr gung pna or gevcyr obbxrq. Xabj ubj 1 obbx znxrf na vgrz ynfg 3 gvzrf nf ybat? Gheaf bhg gur obbxf ner zhygvcyvpngvir, fb 3 obbxf znxrf fbzrguvat ynfg 27 gvzrf nf ybat. (Lrf, 4 vairagbel fybgf vf n ybg, ohg abg fb zhpu jura lbh unir n jrncba gung nyzbfg arire oernxf!)

Gur obbxf lbh jnag ner Ratvarrevat (Cnenqvfr), Ragregnvazrag (Cnenqvfr), naq Pevzvany Ovbtencul (Jbaqreynaq). Gur 2 obbxf va Cnenqvfr ner va gur obbxfgber jvgu gur tynff jnyy juvyr gur bar va Jbaqreynaq vf va gur fnzr obbxfgber nf gur Wncnarfr gbhevfgf.

*END SPOILER*

NateN

Unbound

Like I said earlier there is no excuse, And I don't like it at all, but all of the "woe is me I'm getting ripped off" bullshit is beyond stupid.

It's a fairy tale to think that someone in IT with a budget of X million dollars for X amount of users is going to magically get double or triple that just on a whim.

They underestimated the amount of users for the end of the year. It's all a guessing game. They gained more users than they originally projected. How in the hell do you plan for more than a million unexpected users? How could they know with any certainty?

If they are adding servers to accommodate the extra load, it's going to take some time. You don't just put servers in a room magically it works...If it's true, it's probably the reason the service is intermittent.

Get over yourself and enjoy the free game that they are going to give you and stop being an asshat. Seriously.

heretrix

TheIrishNinja

I got 7 EXP yesterday. :D

RPharazonius

bobbiac

taomaster99

Lag and node death. Welcome to large scale online gaming. Don't believe me? look at [www.eve-online.com] 's hardships of maintaining a low lag environment.

bobbiac

baked ham

I'd hardly call this win-win for anyone involved. Not us, not Microsoft. It's poor business, and it shows that they don't know how to handle their business. Again, need I remind the readers here (it just never seems to get through to some of you, sorry!) that Sony offers a similar service for free on the Playstation 3? You can play all your online games there, for free, any time. The service is reliable and consistent, and you don't have to pay for it. If it became this much of a hassle to play games on Sony's system online, 360 fanboys would be making fun of Sony and the people who own their system all day. You know it's true. Somehow it wouldn't be excusable if Sony had some down time, despite the fact that they let everyone use their service free of charge. And they haven't had any issues. So how's that, eh?

Microsoft has not been in the business of doing ANYTHING besides selling discs with data on them for very long at all. And they clearly have a long way to go in order to catch up to the rest of the big businesses in this industry when it comes to providing a hassle-free, reliable experience to their customers. Xbox Live is a hardware-based product, despite the fact that on the customers end it is a more etherial entity. For the 500 million a year they're getting to provide Xbox Live, (mind you, this ammount does not even include the revenues from advertisements that are visible on every connected 360 dashboard) you'd think they would provide a more sturdy network to support their service. Apparantly, you'd be wrong. And THAT is why people see a problem here, and we are vocal about it. I don't see why we should let them off the hook so easily, when they're content to take our money but unwilling or just too stupid to consider the assets they should spend that money on in order to provide us with a comparable service to the amount we pay for it.

baked ham

It would be great if someone can find and post the executive contact list for XBox Live.

Technick

So one major outage in 5 years means they aren't adequately providing service? I'd like to see you take that bullshit to court.

heretrix

mrbiggsndatx

baked ham

How many people have gone to a college campus where the network sucked? How many people were logged on at a time there? 30 thousand maybe? I know my college always had issues, many more than XboxLive does.

Then, lets really consider cost. You pay 55 bucks for 1 year. You lose maybe 2 weeks the weeks after christmas. Although this is obviously the most unfortunate time to have a SLIGHT outage (No, I never fully lost Live Service.), When you take 14 days out of 365, and make it into a percent, its 3.8% of the year. You just lost 2 dollars.

So they pay you back with an 8 dollar arcade game. That's 6 dollars recompensation for inconvenience. All in all, its a win win for both us and Microsoft.

I do agree that there is a problem with this, but its being blown out of proportion big time.

corranthrn

Phenom88

N-Bomb

Volcomite

bahmodo

And as long as you keep your 360 properly ventilated, you likely never will have a problem with it. My launch 360 lasted 20 months without problem. Then I moved it into an entertainment center where it did not get proper ventilation. It died days later.

robinandtami

TitillatedOcelot

D3Anon

maiky-nisute

Sounds like a stupid idea to me. That's the opposite of meritocracy. No, people are complaining because we've collectively given Microsoft 500 million dollars in the past year for Xbox Live services that they can't seem to adequately provide.

baked ham

I just keep imagining an IT guy speaking to his supervisor....

"we keep getting more people on XBL than expected each month - I'm telling you, if we don't do something to prevent it, there's gonna be problems when the holidays roll around"

to which his boss replied
"Let it ride."

What The Geek

trioxic

If that is indeed the solution then you must also realize that it takes time to order, configure and rollout these servers. It's not like they can have 1000 servers delivered next day air and then dropped into the network ready to go.

@what the geek:
"We'll never know for sure exactly how it went down, but I suspect early estimates called for larger than expected growth, and were dismissed. Several months later, Surprise!! issues came up."

Lol. Ain't that always the case with big corporations?

heretrix

Apparently others in my area have managed to recover their GamerTag if they try every hour or so.

I lost mine when I tried to copy it to a memory card, for some reason it was corrupted when i then tried to use it on my buddy's system to play RockBand.

When my bud tried to buy DLC for RB and couldn't we contacted live support, and after 30 minutes of restarting, removing & re-attaching hard drives, rebooting routers, etc. we gave up and tried to add MS Points to his card on the Live (web) site, only to find a message that the service was down. Why didn't the Live support guy know this?

I still think a free game is BS.. give me free points or 2 weeks free service (going on 3 now). You just know we are going to get shafted with some POS game worth 400 points (or $6.50 CAD).. and why is it that MS points still cost more in Canada?

PS: I have to agree with PLUMENOIR, the Live system IS slower since the fall update.. maybe all that extra crap they are making us download with every blade is slowing us down, no?

thecatwhisperer

Let me put my point another way - I think early estimates called for higher than expected growth - and they probably looked at it and said "but how likely is that?" and stuck to business as usual.

Basically, I think that, while signs may have pointed to it, they still underestimated the growth rate. I think this probably COULD have been prevented, but wasn't - anf for good reason - even if the early estimates called it dead on - 20% growth - any reasonable business person would play it conservative and not ACTUALLY prepare for a 20% growth.

What The Geek

Phantom_Photon

theprof00

First off, don't make guesses at my knowledge of server farms - just 'cause i'm in marketing now doesn't mean I havne't spent some time in IT.

Second, look at the big picture - production on Xbox 360's ramped up in August to prepare for the holiday demand. That's because (based on last year's sales, and market research) retailers begin placing holiday estimates and orders in september / october. While MS couldn't predict an EXACT number of new XBL accounts, they had some idea that it was gonna be a big load on the service several months ago. Taking that knowledge into account, I'm sticking by my guns - I strongly believe that this was more of a financial issue than a technical one. Not financial as in "ms can't afford it' Financial as in "Let's wait and see how this pans out before spending money on it". I also stand by my guess that MS is better prepared for expansion for live than most companies are. However, you're right - it's still a big project, and I'm right - it's a costly one.

We'll never know for sure exactly how it went down, but I suspect early estimates called for larger than expected growth, and were dismissed. Several months later, Surprise!! issues came up.

What The Geek

theprof00

Love it or hate it, Blu-ray will be used for the foreseeable future.

Storing your entire video collection on an HDD isn't my idea of safe storage. Not when there's an alternative. God forbid if you drop it on the way to a friend's house. So long LOTR Trilogy. I guess I'll have to download you again. All 157GB (I'm guessing but I'm sure 12 hours of footage -- as well as bonus footage and special features will take up a lot of space).

incredibilistic

baked ham

Have you worked in a data center? I have.

It's the scale and rate of growth that's the issue, not in the ability to grow a data center.

I'm sure they have a buffer built into their capacity for unexpected influx. I don't believe they could have anticipated growth on the order of magnitude of 20-25% of their existing user base. That's huge!

adinnieken

theprof00

theprof00

I would like to hook up a Live technician to a lie detector and ask them what really happened. somehow I think the answer would be different.

Target33

I beg to differ.

The scale of growth in this circumstance I believe is beyond your comprehension. The number of servers, the amount of drive space, the square footage for rack space, the additional network hardware, the additional electrical load, and the additional AC requirements. Regardless of whether all of this equipment is in one building or spread across the country.

To increase your operation to meet the needs of a 20 - 25% growth when you consider the service had 8 million users in November, even if you anticipated a growth of 2 million users there is no way you could expand your service to handle those 2 million users in the span of a month.

The problem with your conclusion on sales is the fact that not every new user to Xbox Live is a new console. Existing consoles contributed to the influx of new users just as much as new consoles did. While you can anticipate new consoles, based on sales and attach rate for Xbox Live, you can't anticipate on how many existing console owners will subscribe.

adinnieken

I was in 3 towns over the holidays and each had problems, but of varying degrees.

Parry Sound, Ontario - Regular hiccups, best one.

Chatham, Ontario - Next-to-no service at all, non-playable.

Guelph, Ontario - Still finding it difficult to play COD4, and even NHL 08 sometimes.

It seemed the further south I got the worse the Live service was.....You damn yanks are polluting my internets!

Groovy_Guy

I just think they should comp all Gold subscribers a month of Live. It hasn't worked right for a while now, so telling everyone "Don't worry, you aren't paying for this until we get it all straightened out" would probably quiet the rumbling. Even a whole month wouldn't be required, but it might be by the time everything is working right :-P.

(Yes, a free game is nice, but I'd rather have the month of Live since it's what I paid for. I'm difficult like that!)

NateN

.... and do you think MS hasn't left themselves room to grow? Do you think they set everything up in a small poorly ventilated room? No plans whatsoever for expansion?

A company like ms dealing with a service like live has taken precautions to make sure that upgrading would be as painless as possible. They knew how many consoles were sold, and could take a reasonable guess at what that would mean in subscriptions - they were trying to get out of this w/o spending money on the necessary upgrades. This was a business decision, not a technical one. The XBL team works hard to maintain the service, but they have a budget to follow, and at the end of the day, regardless of whether upgrades are likely to be needed, they won't happen if the cost isn't approved.

What The Geek

The other excuse though, about staff not being available to fix the problems, sounds more plausible. Microsoft's reaction time to resolve the problems was pretty disappointing to say the least. Whatever the truth is, they just need to bloody fix it instead of trying to spin it as some "we had problems because we're SO popular" positive press piece.

kiigan

Even if those Gold Memberships lapse and those people continue as Silver Memberships, every Xbox 360 that is connected to the service logs into Xbox Live.

The problem isn't bandwidth. The problem is server load. Depending on how the service functions, scaling the server to a 20% increase in subscribers when you aren't anticipating that growth, could be difficult.

Let's say, for the sake of argument everything scales at the same 20% as your user base does. Consider some of the scaling issues then:

If you presently have 500 servers to provide your service, you'll need 100 more to meet your existing subscriber base.

If you presently need 100 TB of disc space to store user information, you'll need 20 TB more. That equates out to approximately 55,556 360 GB SCSI drives. More when you take RAID into consideration, which I am certain they are using.

None of this takes into account square footage, electrical load or air-conditioning.

adinnieken

Doomstalk

It's actually quite simple - they know EXACTLY how many 360's were shipped to retailers. From there, it's easy math to figure out, on average, what the ratio of purchased 360's to new xbl accounts is. I'm certain they have a number all figured out already for that particular equation.

I work in marketing, and things like that just don't go unnoticed. You absolutely know how much product you've shipped out. If you're shipping more than usual, you prepare for any repercussions that may have.

What The Geek

Hey, remember this the next time YOU screw up at work and need for someone to give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure you won't want to give all of the details of how you screwed up either.

But I forgot they pay you and you are supposed to be PERFECT.

I am not defending MS at all. This was HUGE. But for the most part XBL's performance for me has been pretty damn decent and I think they do deserve the benefit of the doubt. Nobody knows the exact reason this happened and you never will. Let them fix it and lets see what the compensation for this mess is. THEN lets all bitch if it isn't enough.

heretrix

In November Microsoft released figures about where their service was in terms of subscribers, that number was 8 million, I believe. In the span of one month, the service ballooned to 10 million.

I'm sorry, but if you expect your service to increase at a specific rate, month over month, with a percentage increase for the holidays it still doesn't equate to 2 million users.

In five years, they've averaged less than 134,000 new users per month. In one month they added 2 million. How in God's name do you plan for that? That's a 20% increase in one month when your average monthly increase over the life of your product is less than 2%.

I don't see how someone can expect anyone to anticipate growth on that scale. As it is, Microsoft only anticipated a growth rate of 4% for the next 6 months.

So, how do you expect anyone to plan for a growth rate that's 15 times (1500%) the growth rate of the life of the service and 6 times (600%) the growth rate you anticipated?

adinnieken

This is the same 10 millions users who are on xblive, including all the one-time silver members, expired gold members (sold 360's and perhaps even former xbox's), the double accounts for region locked content (I'm european and have a silver us and silver japan account)

10 million seems rather inflated

JakeDunn

Tepoz

Jeff Paine

rhoq

Likewise, the Live capacity planners should have been getting sales forecasts in the early days and followed up regularly with the marketing/sales people to make sure they were adding adequate capacity.

I'm just glad I don't pay for my online gaming. But despite being free, PSN has been pretty darn stable over the holidays, although COD4 has had a couple of days of sporadic issues that seem to have been resolved.

madgunde

GFY, TYVM.

Andy S.

How? I was a Beta Tester for Xbox Live and I can't even suggest that I was on Xbox Live for 7 years. The Xbox Live service, publicly is only 5 years old, the Beta for Xbox Live was less then 6 months.

NOT to mention, the fact that the Original Xbox console was released only a year before Xbox Live came online.

That would have meant you were online on an Xbox a year before the Xbox console was released and two years before the Xbox Live service was made public.

adinnieken

sauvage

maiky-nisute

They may well be looking at it as why invest in the infrastructure if in one month it won't be needed.

NYLatenite

Streeks1984

NutManIV

nxp3

Slint

There are tons of devices out there that use Windows Live IDs.
PCs/Laptops
Sidekicks/Blackberrires/PDAs/Cellphones
Zunes
360s
Possibly more, just cant search/think of any because I'm on the phone with client's right now...

NMC ONE WAY

Deano85

SwampApe

Zarian

I do agree - statistically speaking, this outage is a rarity - XBL is NORMALLY a great service, and I've been very happy with it. This outage makes me feel like the more money they make from live, the less attention is paid to it. Do you HONESTLY believe that they didn't know an increase in subscribes was coming? Yea, it's usually a stable service, but they dropped the ball here. No question.

What The Geek

Software development has a bug/defect rate that would make any six sigma professional break down in hysterics.

Hardware can fail in any one of a million places at any time, without warning.

Nobody should be happy with the outage, on the contrary, but you have to -reasonable-.

Slorg

ucdcsteve

-Same here - Did they really need to tell us it was server strain?? We knew they were completely unprepared for Xmas - that much was obvious to those using the service. I want to hear about what they plan to do for next year, who's been fired, and what they plan to do about compensation. Seems like they have 2 many PR goons and not enough network guys behind the scenes

ErickTheRed

chaos242

I wonder which games you play then. Problems I've had since Christmas

a) no dashboard, marketplace, so no demos, videos or arcade games
b) says no connection but can see who's online on the friendslist
c) no online play with cod4, pro evo, gears, tf2
d) choppy to near unmanageable online play with cod4, pro evo
e) freezing, stuttering, awful lag, loss of connection during online play with cod4
f) and yeah, the auto update with the dlc for bioshock had to wait for marketplace to work as well (thought might as well play a singleplayer but even that was troublesome)

It's all fine and dandy but for a service you pay for that doesn't work right around the time you actually have the planned time to play, well, is very disappointing. Still didn't work properly last night unfortunately.

Personally I hope they make up for it not with an xbla game but with an xbl original. (need to promote it more anyway)

JakeDunn

Pixelantes Anonymous

For a client-server app of it's size it does remarkably well, statistically better than 99.9% of other commercial endeavours.

Plus to get back to my point, if I was looking to gauge the success of a platform, for investment purposes say, the wholesale panic over a statistically small outage shows me this product is pure gold.

And I personally can live a day without xbox live.

Slorg

Here's the thing - Can I go a few days w/o XBL? Sure. I have a job, friends, and other gaming consoles. However, Seeing as how I'm paying for live, I want it up when I want to use it. I don't know about the rest of you, but the problems haven't just been holiday related for me. I had some troubles when Halo 3 first came out, and some minor hiccups a few weeks later. Then the holiday issues began. As I said in my last comment MS makes A LOT of money off of live thanks to our payment for the service, and our viewing of the constant flow of ads. I'm certain they knew there would be an increase for the holidays, and I'm also certain that little to no effort was put forth to prepare for it.

So yea, I could certainly live w/o XBL for a week or two, but since MS is charging me for a premium service, I expect to receive one. And that means that when I want to use it, it's there.

What The Geek

I live just north of atl, and I am having problems still, cant invite or recieve invite, or chats. Nat is open, everything is fine on my end,and on the people i am trying to play with, but not MS's end. This being said I dont think the problem is regional, I wish it was then I would have a good Live experince like you.

schizorogue

But then before Christmas, Live had become nearly unusable. Heck, I have to unplug my network adapter when I boot my console, otherwise, if I log into my profile and it tries to connect to Live, it just sits there with the little Xbox silhoutette with the circles going around it, and never goes past that.

The only way I can do anything is to unplug the adapter, sign in my profile offline and then plug my network adapter in and connect to Live. The marketplace is still iffy right now, but I'm using this time to focus on offline games like Mass Effect and HL2.

plumenoir

Pixelantes Anonymous

maiky-nisute

whiptcracker

DrunkenTrom

Microsoft's spin on the situation: "We just couldn't keep up with how much people WUV us!!!!!"

TitillatedOcelot

I have been on XBox Live for near enough 7 years and this has never happened before. SO everybody jus chill

If you wanna piss and moan, moan about the actual hardware build of the 360 not its peripheral services.

Dappa

FoxHoundADAM

With the rabid-spoiled-child-whiner outrage some people are expressing on the interwebs it really shows what a great product MS has. The more people complain about such a trivial outage, the more it shows MS and investors, what a great product this is.

People are practically killing themselves over a tiny inconvenience.

"Xbox live is down, I can't possibly go on living!"

I would double the live teams bonus this year.

Slorg

now they are saying again that it was "too much customers" sounds like a excuse to make themselves look better while hiding the real truth of their incompetence.

Mr.DuckSauce

Ballaboy311

This Microsoft person is telling us that Microsoft had no plans to increase server capacity to match the increased after-Christmas demand? And he expects us to buy that? Hell no.

And this coming from a marketing person who very well knows they had sale projections for new XBox 360s and XBL subscriptions to be sold during Christmas months in advance. He's telling us Microsoft failed to increase server capacity accordingly?

Microsoft fails for massive damage any way you look at this. Either their sale projections were WAY off, which I don't believe for one second. Everyone knew they'd have a great Christmas. More likely they just completely ignored to build up server capacity to match their sales projections. That's just incredible. What the f*** are we paying them for anyway?

Pixelantes Anonymous

P.S. for all you clowns talking about how this doesn't happen with sony online just need to take the blue pill.

Y0URGOD78

arstal

melvin22

Additionally, two days ago my 360's DVD drive had a stroke and just started scratching the COD4 disc inside it while I sat alone in my apartment 10 feet away with a controller in my hand and my mouth agape. Especially since the console is 7 months old and very well kept.

We'll see how the chips fall and whether or not I remain loyal once my 360 kicks the bucket completely. I'm giving it two months at this point.

crapsh00t

It's also logical that malicious folks free over the holidays might start trouble or that the dash upgrade in November (Am I remembering right that there was one? No broadband in Chilly Holler so we don't play Live.) might be the culprit.

I simply am suspicious of Microsoft, home of crappy software and hardware.

Chilly Hollow

I see a lot of people all over the internet approach this issue with the "oh grow up - it's no big deal" attitude. Well, it's not a huge deal, true, but it's important nonetheless. See, consumers only get screwed because they let themselves get screwed w/o complaint. So, here's my complaint:

I'm very happy with the live service (when it's up anyway) and don't really mind paying the $50/yr for the matchmaking, friendslist, ect. It's a premium price for a premium service. Let's say that of the 10 million live users, 4 mil are gold. That's 200 million dollars a year right there. Now let's look at ad revenue. Every time I log in I see ads for movies, cars, cell phones, and various other non xbox related products. With a targeted audience of 10 million gamers, most of which fall in the coveted 18-24 yr old male demographic, I'm sure they're making at least another 100 - 200 million on ads. Now let's look at microtransactions. I'm sure MS is taking a fair cut on everything sold on the marketplace - after all, they're not only the retailer, and in some cases, the publisher of said content. I don't have a concrete guess for what they're making there, so I'm not gonna throw a number out, but I'd wager it's a lot.

"But Mike, what's the point of all of this rambling you're doing? Get to the point already!!"

Alright, here's the point: With all that money coming in, the huge success of Halo 3, and the impending holiday, I absolutely DO NOT believe that they didn't see this coming. There are people paid very well at every company to see shit like this coming. They didn't upgrade the servers because it costs money to do so. As far as MS is concerned, all of that precious money they're collecting from us year 'round would be better off in their pockets than in new servers. Instead of prepping for this, they waited for it to happen in order to see just how bad it would be. Had their been no problems w/ their current hardware, they'd still have all that money in their pockets and we wouldn't be discussing this now. THAT is my complaint - the fact that this could have been prevented, but wasn't.

What The Geek

maiky-nisute

Three of them were saying exactly the same thing as you "Mines been fine since launch day" - until they broke!

Mine broke within the first month, then I had three faulty ones in the space of two months.

Another friend's DVD drive broke about a 13 months after launch day. (He was out of warranty so he had to just buy another - he got the 3 year cover the second time!)

Three friend's RRoD within ~18 months of launch day.

One friend's RRoD about ~four months ago.

Two friends RRoD in November '07. (One was sent a replacement that RRoD within a week - he was peeved!)

If anyone doesn't believe me, I will quite happily email you gamertags so you can verify the information.

We all work in IT, we all play a lot of games, and we all took the warnings and keep our systems well ventilated and don't move them very often etc. etc.

KillerDr3w

DELETED

maiky-nisute

-Sigil-

But since then i've been playing fine. I wonder how many people are just blowing this out of proportion.

Walker

Also when do we get this free game cos I want it now.

-Sigil-