59 replies to this topic

[moycon]

Just saw this on IGN....

Quote

Microsoft Apologizes for Live Issues
Record Xbox Live sign-ups lead to poor online performance. Free game used as peace offering.
by Hilary Goldstein
January 3, 2008 - In December Xbox Live performed poorly. Today, Microsoft responded with a letter to Xbox Live subscribers. In the letter, Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten issued an official apology to Xbox Live members and promised to make it up to everyone affected by these issues. According to Microsoft, the cause of the problems -- which included severe lag and service outages for some -- was a high increase in new Xbox Live members.

To make it up to gamers affected over the holidays, the big MS is offering a free Xbox Live Arcade download. It is unclear if the title will be a new game or one previously available on Xbox Marketplace. Details on the offer are expected within the next few weeks.

Here is the letter in its entirety:


Dear Xbox LIVE Members:

During this past holiday season you helped us break a number of Xbox LIVE records. This included our largest sign-up of new members to Xbox LIVE in our 5 year history and just yesterday you broke the record for the single biggest day of concurrent members ever on the service.

As a result of this massive increase in usage we know that some of you experienced intermittent Xbox LIVE issues over the holiday break. While the service was not completely offline at any given time, we are disappointed in our performance. I would like to take this moment to thank you each and every one of you for your patience and understanding as our team has worked around the clock to return the service to a stable state.

At the same time we would like to offer a token of our appreciation to all of you in celebration of record success for the service. And as a thank you for your loyalty during this holiday period, we will be offering all of our Xbox LIVE members around the world access to a full Xbox LIVE Arcade game that will be available to download free of charge. In the coming weeks we will be sharing the specific details of this offer with you.

Thank you again for helping make Xbox LIVE everything that it is today!

Sincerely,

Marc Whitten

General Manager, Xbox LIVE
Gamertag: Notwen

Breakpack had mentioned some issues he was having over the holidays. I suspect this has something to do with it.
Me personally I didn't see any issues, probably because I've been engrossed is a fabulous game you might have heard of....Bio Shock (No online play ) I didnt recall having any issues signing into Live though. Still, I'll take a free Live game. I hope they offer games I don't already have. Nice to see MS trying to make amends. I've delt with lag and outages online for years and have never been given a free game because of it. WOOOT!

Edited by moycon, Fri Jan 4, 2008 4:32 AM.

[MCHufnagel]

Frogger/Joust or something else that everyone already has. It sure won't be something newer.

[moycon]

MCHufnagel, on Fri Jan 4, 2008 9:35 AM, said:

Frogger/Joust or something else that everyone already has. It sure won't be something newer.

Meh, I have both of those.
Re-reading that letter, I am guessing it will be a brand new game. It won't be available for download for a couple weeks and I doubt they are going to offer a game that most people have as a peace offering. Lets just hope it's an A title and not something like that Toyota game

[Atari5200]

i don't recall any issues either, but my controller was broke up until about a week ago, so the problems may have been over by then.

[Gabriel]

For about the past two months, I've had a really long lag time whenever my gamertag tries to connect to Xbox Live. The 360 just hangs up because it can't connect.

The past week has been really bad.

[MCHufnagel]

My son had some problems during the holidays. He told me that nearly everyone he was playing with online mentioned having problems. Of course this was for Halo 3 and COD 4. I tried Team Fortress 2 and found the exact opposite. The XBL community for this game is nearly non-existant!

[HammR25]

They *should* just give everyone a credit on their account and let them decide what they want to spend it on but that won't happen because it'll cost them more money.

Edited by HammR25, Fri Jan 4, 2008 8:39 AM.

[Lord Helmet]

I had issues all last week logging on. It was a real pain.

I wonder what game it will be...maybe a choice of several since I have a bunch of them already...or maybe it will be a new release.

I'd rather just have 800 points to use as I wish. Still, its nice to see MS doing something.

[Gabriel]

Hmmm. I wonder what the free game will be?

It would be really nice if they just gave everyone 400 points instead.

[MCHufnagel]

Gabriel, on Fri Jan 4, 2008 10:12 AM, said:

Hmmm. I wonder what the free game will be?

Hmm, they need to give us a newer game that not many people have.

I got it, Space Giraffe!

That'll teach us for complaining!

[rockman_x_2002]

Hmm. Well I just got one for Christmas, and tried importing my Gamertag to the system over last weekend and was experiencing problems with that. I just figured it was because I had it rigged up on my dialup connection (to be used primarily for storing my Gamertag info and leaderboard stuff). But then now that I notice, since that night I haven't had one bit of trouble signing into Live (Silver), or even using it. Seems to work just as fast as anything else the system does, except when waiting to download stuff.

But hey, I'll take free. Whatever it is, I don't have because I haven't bought anything off XBLA. Primarily to avoid the download time. But for free, I'll take it!

[AtariAger]

Damn...wish I read this before I downloaded Metal Slug...!!!



I experienced some "live" issues this past month.

[JamesD]

Translation... no refunds and no credit. Can't wait for the lawsuit.

[Atariboy]

I wouldn't complain if it's Joust, got a 1600 point card sitting here to be redeemed when I feel like it so I can get that actually. So I'll have to hold off.

[Malc74]

Gabriel, on Fri Jan 4, 2008 10:12 AM, said:

Hmmm. I wonder what the free game will be?

It'll be some Aegis Wing-y piece of crap they've got lying around somewhere. They'll shove it up for free and pretend they weren't, er, going to shove it up for free anyway.

[remowilliams]

Interesting. I guess this explains why I found myself offline a few times when playing lately. Was wondering why that was.

[Malc74]

Actually, I've still been having problems, even tonight, with various factors of Xbox Live.

I DEMAND 2 FREE GAMES!

[Hyper_Eye]

I had some problems connecting and staying connected. Also, I had to do a gamertag recovery and that was completely screwed up. Looking on the live forums it was screwed up for anybody that had to do it.

[moycon]

Malc74, on Sat Jan 5, 2008 1:58 AM, said:

Actually, I've still been having problems, even tonight, with various factors of Xbox Live.

Sound like maybe an ISP issue, not a Live issue.
The problem MS is refering occured over a period of 12 days

http://www.engadget....e-arcade-title/

"Gold users who lost about $1.64 worth of Live service"

and has been resolved. If you're still having issues you might want to try an optimize your network.

[Mendon]

According to posts on the official 360 forums, a lot of people are still having problems with Live. Match making, account recovery, and downloads are still hit and miss for many people. Even Major Nelson's website talks about people getting corrupted account recoveries and suggests ways to attempt to fix them.

Personally, I've had a lot of problems since Christmas but most have now gone away. Biggest problem still remaining for me is that my dashboard still frequently loads very slowly. The Marketplace, Friends, and Game blades may be blank with the spinning "busy" icon going for 2 or 3 minutes sometimes; other times everything will load normally.

So I would say Live still isn't 100% healthy at this point for everyone.



Mendon

[Malc74]

moycon, on Sat Jan 5, 2008 5:55 AM, said:

Malc74, on Sat Jan 5, 2008 1:58 AM, said:

Actually, I've still been having problems, even tonight, with various factors of Xbox Live.

Sound like maybe an ISP issue, not a Live issue.
The problem MS is refering occured over a period of 12 days

http://www.engadget....e-arcade-title/

"Gold users who lost about $1.64 worth of Live service"

and has been resolved. If you're still having issues you might want to try an optimize your network.

Lots of people are still having problems by the looks of it. I don't think Thunder Bay Telephone can be held responsible for all of it!

[moycon]

Malc74, on Sat Jan 5, 2008 1:25 PM, said:

Lots of people are still having problems by the looks of it. I don't think Thunder Bay Telephone can be held responsible for all of it!

Wow looks like you're right. I'm fixing to head out to Best Buy to snag Orange Box, hopefully it wont be affecting me when I get back.

[Malc74]

Someone needs to photoshop a picture of a roomful of servers, all with the RRoD.

[Breakpack]

Mendon, on Sat Jan 5, 2008 11:15 AM, said:

According to posts on the official 360 forums, a lot of people are still having problems with Live. Match making, account recovery, and downloads are still hit and miss for many people. Even Major Nelson's website talks about people getting corrupted account recoveries and suggests ways to attempt to fix them.

Personally, I've had a lot of problems since Christmas but most have now gone away. Biggest problem still remaining for me is that my dashboard still frequently loads very slowly. The Marketplace, Friends, and Game blades may be blank with the spinning "busy" icon going for 2 or 3 minutes sometimes; other times everything will load normally.

So I would say Live still isn't 100% healthy at this point for everyone.



Mendon

I still get that,but not as bad.In marketplace XBox originals and Game Videos are unavailable

[telengard]

MCHufnagel, on Fri Jan 4, 2008 11:03 AM, said:

Gabriel, on Fri Jan 4, 2008 10:12 AM, said:

Hmmm. I wonder what the free game will be?

Hmm, they need to give us a newer game that not many people have.

I got it, Space Giraffe!

That'll teach us for complaining!

Hehe, now *that* would be interesting both for the reaction of Jeff Minter and also what kind of reception they'll get for having that be the free game.

If only it were to happen.............

I assume that when they do this somehow the developers get their money?

~telengard