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Xbox Live - The Christmas Zombie
SEWilco writes "Xbox Live is not working, as mentioned 36 hours ago in an Xbox team blog. Even if you can get logged in, multiplayer matchmaking doesn't find enough players for games. For a while Zune Marketplace was also affected. At present Zune status claims 'Up and running' while Xbox Live status continues to say 'Users may experience intermittent issues logging onto Xbox Live. Our engineers are continuing to investigate and are working to resolve this issue. We apologize for any inconvenience.' This has been been going on for days." My assumption is that this is the result of lots of new XBLA users logging in with Christmas 360s.
Quoted from a spokesperson, Heis Afake:
"We were worried, but while the three new users of our online service did add some strain, we managed to keep it up and running."
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I'm sort of at a crossroads between getting at 360 or a PS3. The main thing driving me to get the 360 is Xbox Live, and it's kind of surprising that they can't handle a surge of new purchases. (Are they not expecting people to buy?) Without Xbox Live, the PS3 looks superior, with a free Blu-Ray drive and Wi-fi attached.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
They've not had _that_ massive an increase in subscriptions, surely? Not when you look percentage-wise, anyway. And yet this is the first time I've seen it so flaky, ever, after years as a subscriber. Outright down we've had, yes, but this is like it's straining under some DDOS or something; everything is there, but slow as molasses and times out a lot.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
The outages in service hasn't stopped the usual flood of people (I mean, morons) I don't know trying to friend me on Live.
Anyways, anyone that expects 100% uptime out of a network is kidding themselves.
I sent my friend in Indy a 360, so we could meet up online for some friendly frags, and I haven't been able to get on live at all! This is really starting to get old for a paid service...
RedHat boxes to help with the load.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Who cares what the problem is? Just fix the damn service already. I pay Microsoft for XBL. It had better damn work. Me not being able to host a private match with some of my buddies for days on end is fucking ridiculous.
Let's be fair, here. I've run into this problem a lot lately too and it was annoying. But, for the most part, XBL has been stable and amazing. I'm sure they'll work it out. It's too early to spit too much hate about Microsoft and how stupid they are. The XBOX 360 is a marvel of design and XBL revolutionized on-line play. That's just plain fact, no IMHOs here.
So your theory is that because of a lot of new players, Microsoft can't find enough players for games? Would you care to rethink that theory?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
...his theory is that Xbox Live is having load issues due to the number of new subscribers, and that the servers are having a hard time catching up.
So your theory is that because of a lot of new players, Microsoft can't find enough players for games? Would you care to rethink that theory?
Or it could be that countless new XBLA users are repeatedly trying to long onto Xbox Live, creating something like a distributed denial of service effect, which not only makes long-ins next to impossible, but also makes it difficult to stay logged in and finally negatively affects other services, like servers and match-maker too. Care to rethink your reply?+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
This is one of the reasons I haven't embraced gaming platforms, and prefer to do my gaming on a computer. At least with a computer, there are LAN gaming options (although some game platforms may have LAN gaming capabilities, they don't seem to be as flexible or easy to set up, or even as well thought-out).
This is coupled with the fact that there are many more computer games that have an offline campaign/career/single-player mode, and the newer games for PS3/XBox/etc that even bother to have a single-player offline mode usually do a very poor and limited job of it. Yes, there are exceptions on both sides, but on balance, computer-based gaming does a better job of offline/single-player play, which helps when game servers experience outages.
Multi-player gaming is fun, but I want to be able to play a game I really like after the support for online play from the makers goes away, and also if some snafu with game servers as in this case happens. I know I'd be very very angry that the expensive gaming platform and multi-player service I either bought for myself for Christmas or for some poor kid was basically un-playable for days after the holidays are over.
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Most 360 users have an original Xbox so the traffic should drop then rise as they retire the old Xbox. I doubt traffic could go up more than 50%. Wanna know my theory? Their servers suck and the whole network isn't very scalable. Either that or it hit the maximum number of simultaneous screaming eleven year olds and the servers melted.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Its been 61 days since my family has been able to play most of the downloaded content. I sent my xbox in for the red rings of death and when I got it back my content didn't work. I've been escalated repeatedly I've been told I would have to re-purchase all of my content I've been told I was violating federal law by recording the conversation....from someone in a foreign country. Told it would be fixed within 30 days When that failed and it wasn't and I stated they had said it would be within 30 days they basically called me a liar and said it would take a minimum of 30 days. To be fair when I pointed out the email they apologized, but said it would take 30 more days. That was 31 days ago. I can't even check now to see if it works-but as of 47 days ago it didn't. I was developing for them with the xbox xna service, but currently stopped. This christmas when it came time to choose where to spend my gaming dollars...I went with a wii again. $400 worth of gaming cash spent elsewhere. Since they won't help/listen to customers the only way to send a message is to take the money elsewhere. My idea of fun isn't spending 8 hrs trying to get my content to work-its spending 10 minutes setting up a system, and 7hrs 50 minutes playing.
Xbox Live is completely fine for 360 (no pun intended) or so days of the year, and some of these new users are going to get bad first impressions of the Xbox Live system. It would be nice if I could play games though, my disc tray will not stay shut and I cannot play any of my new games, woohoo!
I heard that the backbone of LIVE is a 500 machine server cluster, running Windows
Vista Ultimate. Prior to Christmas they finished a scheduled upgrade, replacing all
the gigabit ethernet cards. Over the next few days the changes triggered, en-mass, a
request to "re-validate your copy of windows". This went unnoticed, as they machines
were running headless and eventually they all entered "limited functionality mode -
permitting one running process and shutting down after an hour"
I would like to mention that I read somewhere that Microsoft was moving all of their web servers over to 2008 - Longhorn. I wonder if this issue is related. From my experience, and a friend of mine's. . . I've been able to long in all the time. Yet my friend's account could not log in. the difference is this. . . . My account was already on the xbox, and my friend was trying to recover his gamer tag, so he could play online with me. It would get connected, but would time out on download of his gamer tag. after 1 week of trying he finally got through today.
Self proclaimed wannabe geek. You know how it is. Most of us who read this stuff probably fit in that category.
Do other game servers degrade more gracefully? As the original journal entry asked, such as by allowing anonymous unrated games if the online identities are not available?
I love my 360 and I'm pretty patient with a downtime - but having a paid service not work properly for days is starting to be hard to justify. Imagine if WoW didn't work for a week? Why would that be unacceptable and LIVE not working for a week be considered OK?
Plus one just has to quickly look at the Wii and PS3 - yes, not the same level as Live, but they are FREE. We, as 360 users, pay for a service and if that service does not work - we have a right to complain and MS should really offer more details.
Major Nelson has been pretty quiet about it (his site is also extremely slow atm probably because he's been a main point of contact during times like these) and the MS Live Support page is B.S. "some users may experience difficulty..." with no other updates. (btw EVERY user I know has issues, I haven't seen one friend or one post that says 'i don't have any issues').
How about MS gives us a message when you log into Live or a link to a support page which will give us some more info from behind the curtain. From my old MMPORG days, I can tell you people don't mind the downtime as much as long as you let them know what the hell is going on and you are actually working on it - verifying this with communication and not just a sentence that says 'we're working on the problem' (which is all thats been said for a week now).
When I work with clients, if things take longer than expected or don't work properly, you let them know why it is and what you are doing about it and why it won't happen again - they pay me so they deserve to know. No different here, I'm paying MS for a service and I want to know why that service hasn't worked right for a week. The Xmas thing is BS too, my clients don't care what holidays are around, if they need something done or fixed, we either do it - or they take their business elsewhere. Does it suck for the people that work? Of course - but I can tell you, every company I've ever worked at - a lot of people don't mind working around Christmas. We've launched web sites on Thanksgiving, New Years, Christmas, you name it.
and this isn't the 1st time live on the 360 has had issues, during launch it had some issues, during e3 it had issues, a lot of the times when demos are released there are issues, the system constantly has some lag, and the more content, users and updates that go up, the more issues seem to occur.
People pay $4 - $8 a month - mostly to pay for more things (arcade games + downloads + tv shows + movies) or to get promotional items/advertising (which MS would get money for). How much money does one have to spend to have the system work properly?
I have only had one issue recently with XBL. I wasn't able to log in for about an hour 2 days ago, but since then I haven't had any issues.
Xbox LIVE Service Status: Status: Up and running.
With all the problems the 360 has been having over the years, I'm seriously thinking about getting a PS3 (I already have a Wii).
If you don't mind losing your console for a couple months at a time.
Did anyone see the Xbox Live status at xbox.com/support? It says "Status: Users may experience intermittent issues with login, account recovery, matchmaking, and statistics. We are aware of the issue and are actively working towards a resolution. We apologize for any inconvenience.". Reminds me of a classic Microsoft joke: A helicopter was flying around above Seattle yesterday when an electrical malfunction disabled all of the aircraft's electronic navigation and communication equipment. Due to the clouds and haze the pilot could not determine his position or course to steer to the airport. The pilot saw a tall building, flew toward it, circled, drew a handwritten sign and held it in the helicopter's window. The sign said "WHERE AM I ?" in large letters. People in the tall building quickly responded to the aircraft, drew a large sign and held it in a building window. Their sign said, "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER." The pilot smiled, waved, looked at his map and determine the course to steer to SEATAC (Seattle/Tacoma) airport and landed safely. After they were on the ground, the co-pilot asked the pilot how the "YOU ARE IN A HELICOPTER" sign helped determine their position. The pilot responded, "I knew that had to be the MICROSOFT building because they gave me a technically correct but completely useless answer."
no servers is what you get when you are owned
never will i buy into a console scheme
I really, really love my PS3. (Yes, I'm thinking of marrying it.) The PSP/PS3 interaction is pretty damned cool. I play the hell out of Warhawk, and Ratchet and Clank is one of the best games out there. Unreal Tournament looks like it's going to kick some serious ass.
That said, I wish I had Bioshock for the PS3. I played Halo 3, and it was OK, but really nothing that great. Then again, I was never impressed with the Halo series, as a whole. They are good, solid games; I just never got into the story line. Bioshock, though, seems to be interesting.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is this: the PS3 is a damned solid piece of engineering, with some great *technical* advantages over the XBox. But the XBox has some great games. Now, you can't get R&C for the XBox, nor Haze (which also looks cool). But Haze is still a month off, it seems.
If you want a PSP, though, it's damned cool the way it works with the PS3. And it has internet radio now, too. I've been using it to remote my media from the PS3, and I can access my music and videos anywhere there's an internet connection. Now, *that's* cool.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
It's a business relationship, and if you go deeper than that, you're a sucker.
Service sucks? Quit the losers and move on to something better.
Sure, you'll lose some of your investment...but I'd rather lose some of my money than my self respect. Not that much remains of the later.
Blar.
Nuff said. Yes there are problems at the moment, but no they haven't been going on any longer than the 36hrs stated. If you've been having problems for longer than this then the issue is with your connection and when the current issue is fixed you're still going to have those issues if you've don't nothing to fix them.
Maybe it was working at 1 PM, but all evening it has not been working. The Status message is back to the text which does not say "up" and does not admit it is broken.
I think the real problem is that they broke something with the latest update. Ever since I got the Winter Update it has been very slow. I think they are just using the vast number of new users as an excuse.
I don't see why xbox live has to be as bad as it is, your paying £40 a year for this so called service that doesn't work all the time. Why can't Microsoft follow a working system where they don't milk the cash cow for all they've got and write a system that actually works. This just reassures me that sticking to PC games and steam was the right choice. That's not to say steam doesn't have its crashes, it happens occasionally such as steam friends rebooting randomly, But I haven't had a problem getting a game going or playing online since the release of Half life 2. And on the up side of steam, I am not wasting £40 a year to pay for a dodgy service.
When they released halo 3 and other games were affected by it XBL and ubi service just ignored tickets, and many people on /. barked at me, that my connection sucked. Turned out, that it wasn't the problem, and they applied a silent fix.
:)
This time interestingly I played every night through the Christmas (except 24th night), 25-28 every night, and COD4/RS Vegas, games that were affected according to many.
I saw no problems at all. 31st has a huge amount of "host ended the game" errors. Not sure if people were just drunk and ignorant, or if there were really service problems.
I play from Costa Rica though, and did not take the time to figure where I really connect to (last time it was MIAMI, as the local provider's cable pops up there from the sea.
And before the hungover flame starts: I have a life, and hate the holidays (as sitting at a table with family bores me to hell), so I play as much as I can after escaping as early as I can. And my wife approves it, so I guess it is OK.
Happy new year
It seems to be working much better (only a few oddities) on January 1, 2008.
£40 a year?!?! Wow, you Brit's are getting shafted!
Ebay commonly has 1 year XBOX Live membership cards (North American) on for ~$40USD + shipping.
I bought one recently...total came to $47 USD. Or approx £24.
I was hesitant about Xbox Live at first having been an avid PC gamer, but now having tried it, I find it a reasonable value at $4/month
The matchmaking, integrated voice chat, achievements & friends management all work very very well.
Even this past week where there were apparently "issues", the worst problem I had was finding people playing specific maps in Orange Box. Oh, and a couple of my achievements weren't recorded.
It wasn't anything like when "issues" have occurred on PC MMORPG's though (Yes, EQ2, WoW, I'm looking at you).
I became an Xbox Live subscriber in 2004, since then I have seen a small hand full of scheduled outages for upgrades which were planed on non-peak hours and announced well in advance... I have also seen a few unplanned outages none of which lasted more than a few hours and the total number of which I can count on 1 hand.
Whatever happened on the 22nd was substantial and unlike anything the XBL service has seen before... and it came at a very bad time considering that week saw probably a 10-20% boost in membership all at once combined with most of the support staff on vacation.
it was a "perfect storm" so to speak and hardly typical of the XBL service.
Don't get me wrong, I've been quite aggravated with the inability to reliably login for more than a few minutes at a time, especially considering it happened during a week were my plans were basically to kick back and relax with my favorite game. But at the same time I'm not going to troll around claiming that XBL is a piece of junk that never works... because that's not even close to the case.
Collector's Edition
I guess I'm not a complete online junkie because when I say "met" I mean someone I've actually met, not exchanged some bits with over a network.
Given all the problems during the holiday season, Microsoft should add a month of service to everyone's account. Most people would normally have spent about a month worth of time during the week of Christmas playing if the system would have been working correctly.
If this was any outer service you would demand a refund it has been (**ck c**p ) unreliable sins the 20 of December continual down time of 20% this dose not include lost of connection or can not connect to host or other problems .It is Sade that supposedly the top company for I.T in the world cant get it right if they sent more than one guy to fix it this may help and lets not forget WE ALL PAY for this o so reliable service.
__ Ps see if you can find a link to complain to the Xbox live team or Microsoft about this not a phone number
post it if you do and perhaps we can flood them with complaints.
Sony Ps3 and Wii don't have this many problems and they are *****FREE***** FREE *******FREE********