Xbox Live Gamertag Switch Causes Nickname Anguish

Thanks to TeamXbox for its story discussing issues requiring some Xbox Live players to switch their GamerTag name IDs, since, according to Microsoft: "There are many names on the Xbox Live service that are extremely similar to other Gamertags (in most cases differentiated by only a single space.)" Some gamers who have had the same nickname for almost 2 years are understandably upset, though Microsoft is offering "a free game... [and] 1 year subscription to Xbox Live" by way of compensation. An official Microsoft spokesperson on the Xbox.com messageboards indicated: "This problem has nothing to do with the way we code...it's what we need to do to normalize data as we connect to other partners that need to work w/ [Xbox] Live... We are very upset that we had to do this" - some commenters claim (though it's not been specifically stated) that EA's upcoming Xbox Live debut has helped precipitate the name switch.

Comments

Madness

[Snowmit]

Anyone else feeling like it's kind of unfair that the people who couldn't find a name more creative than kill3r are now getting FREE LOOT?

Re:Who?

[fireduck]

reading the forum postings in the 2nd link, it sounds like both parties with similar name are being forced to change. lots of people complaining about identical names with and without spaces being hit (e.g., fire duck & fireduck); most of the complainers seem to have been beta testers from the beginning of the xbl service. so it's understandable they'd be annoyed.