Xbox Live outage, day 13: still up and down, still preventing fun from being had

To all those who've been tipping us like crazy about Xbox Live going back down again: yeah, we heard, and we know you're not happy. If you're having problems (or even if you're not), feel free to let us know in comments. Almost two weeks of outages, yeesh.

To all those sick of hearing about Xbox Live being up and down: feel free to stop reading here, there will be another news story along in a few minutes. But do remember that Xbox Live is possibly the most widely used paid gaming service in the world, so forgive us for keeping close tabs on this story. Mwah!

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 3rd 2008 9:15PM]

I got to agree with you about Ryan trying to piss people off. That last paragraph just sounds like a whiny little bitch. "Oh noes, somebody said something mean about me. I better make sure that they don't do it again by telling them not to post. We only want the people that agree with us 100%, and if not, then I am taking my ball and going home."

I have been critical of them before, and I have been banned because of it (which is why I am not using my usual posting account). A while ago we were asked not to make comments in a post about Leopard if you do not use it. Do they do the same about other products? Where are we asked not to make a post if you are not a LIVE user? Instead we get a lot of "I never have any PSN problems."

The quality of this site has really been sliding.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 3rd 2008 9:19PM]

Of course, this was in response to "Zeus the God". Just above my comment it said "replying to Zeus the God [Undo]", but it was not listed under his comment. When are you going to fix this bug, huh Engadget? When are you going to give daily notification about this bug that has been around for months?

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 3rd 2008 10:02PM]

This is curious indeed. I've been playing COD4 non stop for the last month or so, and haven't had a single problem. Then again, I live in Japan.

Muhahaha!

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 3rd 2008 9:33PM]

why is have to be COD4

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 3rd 2008 9:39PM]

And Microsoft, make sure you compensate the new users, too. People like me that just bought a 360, and are considering making the leap into purchasing Gold membership. I'll tell you know, having a free trial and not being able to use it really doesn't make me want to go Gold year round.

[jafjohnsongmailcom Posted Jan 3rd 2008 9:39PM]

Thank you for updating this! I am glad I am not the only one pissed...

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 3rd 2008 10:02PM]

I haven't had any troubles at all as of New Year's. I was on Halo 3 Team Slayer last night for a while and my brother and his friend are playing Call of Duty 4 right now. I can't say that I've experienced any problems whatsoever since that big ball dropped. I also agree that any xbox live user should know full well that xbox.com has all of the info you need. However anyone taking the time to make unnecessarily snotty posts is "contributing" something far worse to Engadget.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 3rd 2008 10:04PM]

These "Live Down" blogs certainly rack up some entertaining comments.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 3rd 2008 10:23PM]

This is ridiculous, if I'm paying 7 bucks a month for online play I should at least get good service. I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I'm tired of having to put up with this crap. Sony and Nintendo's online play is free and they're not having problems, are they? If they're going to give us crap service it should at the very least be free.

[Ubereem Posted Jan 4th 2008 3:15PM]

I can't recover my damn gamertag this is bull.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 3rd 2008 11:54PM]

i like that he is keeping us up to tabs on Xbox live..
andi like how mircosoft singles out mathmaking on COD4

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 4th 2008 4:33PM]

Thanks for the update. I wish the update was up before i started having problems, but MS is pissing me off. THANKS

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 4th 2008 12:43AM]

ive had xbox live for 2 yrs now and its never acted like this.Once christmas came and everybody got a xbox 360 the servers got jammed up.Thanks to yall.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 4th 2008 12:45AM]

how bout no its to fun yah and call of duty was screwed for hours.

[Rocketboy Posted Jan 4th 2008 2:02PM]

Don't they know that there's fun to be had?

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 4th 2008 2:34PM]

If MS truly wanted to fix this problem by now, I'm sure they could have.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 5th 2008 10:04AM]

Bought a PS3...problem solved.

[OneLove Posted Jan 5th 2008 5:31PM]

whats Xbox Live?

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 5th 2008 9:20PM]

with this news and the Blue ray news its time for the 399 PS3 to shine!!!

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 10th 2008 12:46PM]

Having built saleable applications I have an understanding of the complexity involved in architecting this kind of infrastructure. My theory is that the outage is probably a coriollis affect of massive increase in users and badly written code.

Almost 5 million people purchased 360’s over the holidays, COD4 has been mostly affected. The popularity of the is game has been a surprise to many. If COD4 had a minor bug that caused a slight performance hit on the servers that hosted it could cause these issues.

I have personally worked bugs like this for weeks and throwing more hardware at the problem could solve it but it takes time and people scarce resources when a lot of your staff is in the middle of holidays themselves.

[jigsawhc Posted Jan 10th 2008 11:49PM]

Seems like things are working better today