Xbox Live: still experiencing technical difficulties
By Ryan Block 
posted December 28th 2007 5:31PM
posted December 28th 2007 5:31PM
We're starting to think Xbox Live's holiday strategy was modeled after Newtonian physics: what goes up must come down. Although the Live support site shows the service as being "up and running", apparently users are still experiencing intermittent issues, sometimes more dramatic than those officially listed. We don't know about you, but even though only some of us on we were able to get on, even they have been seeing a lot of stalling and freezing -- and the unlucky ones are just completely shut out of Live. How are things going out there? Any XBL issues of which to speak?P.S. -Microsoft, congrats on the great holiday season. You obviously sold a TON of Xbox 360s and Live service contracts. Now be a doll. Give everyone a week (or, say, a month) of free Live service for the ugliness over vacation, ok? These people paid for their service when the other guys offer it up for free.
Read - Live support site: still having problems
Read - Our post about problems from last weekend
Read - Our other post about outages on Christmas day
Update: Our broham Major Nelson says the Live engineers have identified a fix for the issues and things are on their way to being back on the up and up. Hopefully this time for good!
Oh wait. The PS3 has such a sub-standard game library it's laughable. No, I'll stick to my 360 with the fantastic games. We'll see about a PS3 later if Sony ever manages to catch back up with Nintendo and Microsoft
robmania001: "No games for PS3" a tired old argument. It was true maybe 6 months ago. It's certainly not now.
Yeah, this is ridiculous. I've paid for my Live service for over 5 years. In that time, I think I have experienced it being down for a collective 3 days. We should sue! Sue Sue Sue! I think we are owed about $2.38. That should do it. That'll teach 'em. Honestly, my internet connection is far more expensive and it's been down at least 4-5 days every year (thanks Comcast). It's newsworthy becasue it's rare that Live has widespread network problems. It probably happens just as much with Sony and Nintendo but we don't hear about it because far less people use those services.
Would you be saying that if you couldn't load your saves or use your downloaded and paid for content because you can't recover your gamertag. I do think a token gesture is in order, not cause it's owed but cause it's the right thing to do.
A mate cant get on over here in NZ either... So he's off to play GHIII on ps2
Tim. You can't just say "Xbox Live kicks the Playstation Network's ass and is a million times better." That statement just defines the fact that M$ clouds your brain with Halo 3.
As far as the 360 having a ton more better games. The games that are exclusive for 360 are usually nothign special. check out the link below to see your "ton more better games"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_360_games
seriously, 360 is a waste of money. waste waste waste. so keep on wasting your money. because i'm sure i will never change your mind, nor will the fact that your PAID for online service sucks, plus has advertisements. wow, what a shitty deal. have fun! I'm gonna go play warhawk for free now. bye!
I could reply with a long, well thought-out post about why you're completely wrong, but I'll just settle for calling you an idiot.
Yeah, you're right, the games for the 360 aren't that great. I mean, I really enjoy playing them, and my friends really enjoy playing them, and we all enjoy playing together, but what do we know?
I have been without xbox live for 3 days now, been unable to recover my account. Each time I call they tell me that they are "updating the servers" and that it will be another 12-24 hours but its been 3 days. Really really sucks. Doesn't make sense that microsoft wouldnt be prepared for something like this
I've been having problems since the first time live had tech difficulties. Ever since then I have to update my router settings (not change them just go on and save settings). To get it up and running and afterwards its fine its really odd.
I too have experienced problems around the same times as your posts. Today's outage was especially annoying because I was trying to activate a 1600 points card so I could download "Move Along" for Rock Band.
I was trying to give them my money, but they would not take it! I was eventually able to sign on after a few hours, and I have kept the 360 on because I do not want to shut it off and risk the connection being lost.
Very frustrating, and we definitely deserve better for our money.
I'm not able to log in at all to my user profile. Not only is Live not responsive, it messed up my Gamertag, saying that there's an error recovering it and I need to try again to sign in at all. Everytime I try I get a message saying that Live is not available. So right now, I can't even play games with my gamertag, I have to use a new one.
It also won't let me access my gamertag and fails during recovery process. I am new to Xbox and XBL and this is really turning me off to it. I've been trying all day to redeem codes for 1-year subscription and MS points. I've been wanting to buy some games. I'm about ready to Ebay my Xbox and accessories and go back to playing PS3. I keeping hearing that Xbox is better, but so far what I've seen is pretty pathetic.
Yeep, I recovered my account on another console today to play some games online with him, only to find during the middle of the recovery, it dies. I get home to find my account can't even be signed in locally or offline. So, now I'm stuck with sitting here without the ability to play any games on my profile. It's just floating about in the Xbox Live ether, unable to be accessed.
Wonderful.
Near constant delays in signing in and COD4 is dropping games left and right.
I do expect a service I pay for to be usable when I want to use it. It's my money I'm giving them after all. I also expect compensation for even an hour or two of down time on my ISP. That hour or two could be a critical time for me to work in after all.
Obviously, gaming isn't work (for me anyway) but I have limited time for leisure and expect it to be there when I want to use it, which is why I pay for it after all.
Every time I have attempted to log in since the 22nd (okay, not all that often) it's been unavailable to me. Good times.
Not.
The thing is that when the free to air radio braodcasted TV goes down, i don't really mind as i am not loosing money because i unable to use their service. But when the sattelite dish TV i pay for goes down, i expect a full service and yes i get pissed when there are interuptions. It's the same principle applied here. In the end of the day all you want to be doing is having a good time playing online with other people. Sure the extras such as gamertags and excellent integration with the interface is great, 50 bucks is alot of money especially to those gamers who go on with a one-off payment and want to enjoy(maybe not full-fledged) online experience. With all due respect the 360 has a great library of games, but people have to stop saying PS3 does not. UT3 is probably PS3's biggest blockbuster and its sitting right up there with the other major online shooters on the FPS market.
All the people saying MS should compensate should keep their mouths shut until MS has actually fixed the problem and then see what they do.
As to those complaining about paying $50 for a years service try finding a web host who will only charge you $50 a year and guarantee 100% uptime.
Most of you obviously have no understanding of how the internet works. Maybe the problem isn't with the Live servers but with the connection to the servers. It could be with the server you go through just before you get to the Live servers. When you log on you don't connect directly to the Live servers you 'hop' to the Live server via lots of other servers and if one of them has problems then you won't connect. If a server near the Live server has problems then nearly everyone will be affected.
If you knew anything about the Internet, you'd know that you don't operate with a single point of failure for a network the size of Live. You mitigate transit issues by distributing your data centers, and ensuring that you have multiple redundant routes to each center.
The problem they're experiencing is most likely either a capacity issue on the front-end (not enough servers), or something seriously wrong with the back-end (e.g., database meltdown).
Nice preach though. Keep trying.
Actually there are certain types of failure that means the system still thinks the server is working when it is not and continues to try and route you through that server. If such an issue has happened near to the Live data centre then it would affect everybody.
Given that the issue does seem to revolve around connectivity it is more than likely a front end issue but not necessarily at the data centre.
Hmm having just read the latest story http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/29/xbox-live-up-and-running-flush-with-irony/ I'm going to retract my statement about it being front end. Unless the problem lies between the Live servers and whatever server MS stores all it's accounts on then it's front end just not our front end.
Bottom Line:
People can defend MS all they want, but when they are charging for a service that is "far more advanced and community driven" than the other guys, it should work 99.99% of the time. You are paying $50 dollars a year so that you can play Halo without any problems...when there are problems, there is nothing wrong with complaining about it.
For everyone who is stating something along the lines of : "I have had Live for X amount of years and rarely have problems so everyone else who is having problems is nit-picking, anal, and needs to get over the lapse in service" - - - please, do not fool yourself. If your purchased an automobile and it stops working due to a problem that is totally out of your control, I guess you would just smile, cut Honda some slack because their cars work "most of the time," and just go on with your life and deal with it. You paid money for something. It should work.
I personally don't care all too much that Live is having some issues, but if someone is pissed about it, they should be; after all, we are operating under the assumption that we give MS an *additional* $50 so things of this nature do not happen.
I always thought the PS3 and Wii fanboys were nuts to suggest that their online services are passable, but it's hard to argue with FREE. $50 a year really starts starts adding up, not to mention totally dismisses the "PS3 is expensive" argument.
And yes, this is the bottom line. Why? Because I said so -
I own all the systems and I like each one for different reasons. The "PS3 is expensive" argument always bugged me. Sure the system costs more but after you buy the wireless adapter, HD DVD Player, $50 Xbox Live...you are talking at if not more then I paid for my 60G PS3. My PS3 and Wii were wireless and online ready out of the box. They have free online and they both have great games. I just started playing my Xbox games on Live recently even though I have owned the system (and it's predecessor) for a while. One reason was because I felt if I wanted to get into a pissing match with some kid, I'd go start a fight with one of my own. I am going to go play my Wii and have a drink or 4.
I was playing BioShock all night last night, so I didn't really notice the outage, except I would sometimes pop up the Guide to change tracks for my gaming muzak and notice that my gamercard was replaced with a Connect to LIVE link, so I guess I was getting kicked off a couple of times.
Other than that, the past couple of days have been fine, especially when I was playing CoD4 online, no lag or disconnects, and game matchmaking was very quick.
If they are on their way to fixing it, I haven't seen it. I still can't recover my gamertag. My Xbox is nothing more then a fancy paperweight at the moment, since without I can't play my saved games or anything. I have been trying since last night.
Hahahaha i love seeing these xbots defend their crap system and it's disgusting maker....microsoft, even with all the problems and ripoffs, talk about brainwashed!!! good job suckers microsoft thanks you morons for your support!!
I have been shut out intermittently the past week or so from Live. It really sucks.
recently my brand new 360 broke due to the unreadable disk glitch. i went out and bought a new one today but it seems as though xboxlive isnt working and i cant do anything with my 360. ms should really make a move on fixing this problem soon or there wont be anymore customers for them to disappoint
I can't get onto xbox live and it's doing my FUCKING TITS in- Microsoft had better give me a FREE XBOX ,Free Games for life a Hooker with big juicy tits and a domino's pizza with all the toppings NOW