Unless you've been gaming in Tanzania for the past seven days you'd know that it's trendy to complain about how Xbox Live has under-performed this past week. So trendy that we've heard of people demanding compensation for the week-long service disturbance. And rumor has it that we may just be getting that compensation soon.According to the folks over at The Bitbag, they were told by their "Microsoft contact" that Microsoft is planning on making right to Xbox Live Gold subscribers (not Silver, they don't pay anyway) who had to put up with an unruly Xbox Live last week. What type of compensation or when it would be coming wasn't detailed, but we have a few ideas of our own. How about a "I Survived the Xbox Live Outage of Holiday 2007" gamer picture download. Or maybe something less creative like free Microsoft points, a free movie rental or Arcade game. Whatever is planned or isn't planned we're crossing our fingers simply for Xbox Live to stay alive. That would be the best compensation of all, a stable service for 2008.
[Via Xbox-Scene]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
1-02-2008 @ 10:11AM
HazyCloud said...
Not sure if this has to due with the outage, but I found 3 HD movies on the US Marketplace for 220 MS points a piece. Thought I would share.
The Perfect Storm
Swordfish
Requiem for a Dream
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1-02-2008 @ 10:12AM
BKB said...
Hope this is true. I'd be down for MS points. 200 would be great, 100 would be fair. One month of free gold would be great, one week would be fair!
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1-02-2008 @ 10:14AM
The Oreo said...
Damn bloody right we should get compensation. This week has been shite, If Microsoft didnt step up to the plate and give us something in return, I'd have forced them to eat their hats or something equally diabolical.
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1-02-2008 @ 10:27AM
JakubK666 said...
In UK we didn't have those problems (at least with Marketplace as I haven't played Halo for a few days) but hell, we want compensation too :)
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1-02-2008 @ 10:41AM
mattclarkie said...
We did, but not as widespread and severe. I noticed a small bit, but I had 2 friends who couldn't log into Live.
I actually just ordered the Live Vision + 12, as my Live is up in a few weeks, and my headset is about to die, and I am a AP whore and want to get some of those Camera dependent achievements.
1-02-2008 @ 11:57AM
Chris said...
JakubK, don't speak for the whole UK community! I couldn't get online at all on the days I tried around Christmas, and when I could it would sign me out and not find games. I know a few friends who also experienced the same. The UK was the same as everyone who had these problems...
1-03-2008 @ 5:07AM
Boff said...
Absolutely.
Extremely flakey logging in to Live. Couldn't do ANY multiplayer gaming (GHIII, TF, COD4) completley ruined my christmas gaming sessions for the short time I was off work. Not amused.
And it was fucked up yet again last night on COD4 in the UK. (Around 10:30pm 02/01/08)
1-02-2008 @ 10:29AM
poprocker said...
hmm. never noticed any problems. Of course i tend to go outside from time to time.
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1-02-2008 @ 10:38AM
JW said...
Then go play in the road.
1-02-2008 @ 11:04AM
jaybird1905 said...
hahhaha.
you just made my day.
1-02-2008 @ 10:33AM
Deano said...
I'd bet heavily that there's been much grief and strife within the Live team while this has been happening but I wonder if the root of these problems is down to how Live is funded?
I imagine MS don't want to provide it at a loss and they might be top-slicing those subs before they form Live's budget. And if you find it tough meeting that budget then resources might be spread out too thinly.
It wouldn't be the first time that the bean-counters screw things up and crazy things have been known to happen within Redmond.
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1-02-2008 @ 10:36AM
Whingnut said...
Silver users do pay. If a silver user has a 360 that's been replaced due to RRoD or other reasons, or have upgraded to an Elite model, all of their downloaded content requires verification via the Live service as their console serial numbers have changed. Without the Live service they are now unable to access any of their downloaded content whether it be the XBLA games or expansions for games like Oblivion, GH2 or 3, and Rock Band. I think silver users need to be compensated to some degree as well.
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1-02-2008 @ 10:43AM
mattclarkie said...
Doen't just logging in to Live with a silver ID work to verify your account? Surely it doesn't need to be Gold?
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1-02-2008 @ 10:48AM
xenocidic said...
If any compensation is forthcoming I would bet it is in the way of added time to your subscription. I doubt they'll pony up for MSP.
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1-02-2008 @ 10:52AM
Deano said...
Adding time on will be unlikely; that would set an unwelcome precedent for Live given that there's no service level agreement in place. Also they have factored in when the Live income comes in and delaying that is not attractive.
If they drop 100 points on each user I would say we've been very lucky.
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1-02-2008 @ 10:52AM
Silverlotus said...
I suspect those of us who went from Gold to Silver during the outage (on January 1st in my case), won't get any compensation.
It was very frustrating to see the final days of my Gold Membership tick away and not be able to make use of it. And doubly frustrating since my husband and I were both off work and could have made good use of those last few days to rack up a couple more achievements and play with friends. :-/
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1-02-2008 @ 10:53AM
Mister2zx3 said...
It's worth the 400 points they may hand out to gold members to get people to stop playing COD4 and possibly give some of those shoddy MS games a second thought.. remember gayblows3 and 4hundredBugs Motorsport 2? MS will stop at nothing to hinder others success when their own lame titles fall short. very short.
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1-02-2008 @ 1:02PM
Matt said...
You are so cool, how do I be like you. Gayblow 3 = Genious.
1-02-2008 @ 11:04AM
Neon Jebus said...
While I think adding a month of service would be fair my bigger issue is about DRM.
This outage shows that when the service is down those who purchased XBL Arcade content (and who have either had a system replaced via RRoD or upgrading to an Elite) cannot play games they own.
Holding my paid content hostage is unacceptable.
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1-02-2008 @ 12:58PM
Mike said...
That's funny. When my box got replaced, I had the same problem with having to be logged in to access DL'd content, so I called in complained. They told me to simply log in and re-download everything (not pay for it, just download it) and that would fix it. That worked for me, maybe you should try it (once Live is up, of course).