Here is a very well written manifesto to MS about the recent perils of XBL. Its worth the read. Trust me. The forum post has been locked since and mysteriously disappeared. I managed to salvage it because the page was already loaded and I emailed the link to another person who could not access it. His GamerTag, DWells55X, is now mysteriously invalid all… weird. Click more for the entire ‘festo.
I won’t pretend that this is a completely original idea and no one else has ever raised the question of why Xbox Live is a pay service. In fact, I used to be one of the people who argued against them and supported Xbox Live. But, with recent Xbox Live troubles and news, it’s becoming significantly more difficult to do this. Having taken the time to really look at the state of Xbox Live is making me have to start agreeing with the people who I used to argue against.
Let’s start with the recent Xbox Live downtime. It is, quite frankly, absolutely unacceptable for a pay service. Until a few days ago, my brother had a two week period where he could not recover his GamerTag from Xbox Live. That’s two weeks of no Xbox Live access whatsoever. He tried deleting the profile of his Xbox and recovering it again, but this didn’t work either. Now he couldn’t even access his game saves or earn any achievements. Although I had my account on my Xbox, that’s not to say everything’s been great. Like the rest of you, I’ve been experiencing a lot of trouble with Xbox Live. Inability to join games, sign in to Xbox Live, load the dashboard blades, sometimes problems bad enough to freeze my 360 entirely until I pulled out the Ethernet cable.
Yes, we’re getting a free Xbox Live Arcade game as compensation for nearly 3 weeks of Xbox Live downtime. Woohoo. No details have been given, and as a result I suspect that this free game will be a specific title or list of titles which Microsoft will choose. I feel that at the very least we deserve to be either refunded for a month of Xbox Live or given a free month on top of this. Think about it, if your cell phone service had trouble for a month, dropping calls, refusing to dial numbers, etc., you wouldn’t be satisfied with a free cell phone game. The first step would be a refund for that month and then some sort of compensation for the inconvenience on top of that.
Connection troubles aside, there’s other reasons why I feel Xbox Live shouldn’t be a pay service. As of March 1, 2008, Xbox Live Diamond will become an additional $6.95 fee. No thanks. Not only was this service close to worthless, but to charge for something that was supposed to be a benefit of paying for the Xbox Live service is absurd. It was pathetic as a freebie and to think anyone is willing to pay for this is ridiculous.
Next up, Xbox Live is full of ads. Even when you first boot up your Xbox 360, you’re greeted with ads on the Xbox Live blade. While this may not seem like a huge issue, how would you feel if your internet service provider, who you pay a fee to, placed ads on the desktop of your computer (which you also paid for)? Gold members should at the very least be given an option to disable these ads.
Xbox Live also feels the need to wrap content in restrictive DRM schemes that limit users’ access to the items they’ve purchased. Worst of all, this is done without proper warning of just how restrictive it is. Xbox Live Arcade titles and dashboard themes are unusable when not connected to Xbox Live unless you are on the same Xbox they are purchased on. So, as a reward for being a loyal customer and upgrading to the Halo 3 edition of the Xbox 360, all the content I purchased on my previous content is now unusable when I’m not signed into Live on the account I purchased them from. This means that when Xbox Live is having trouble or when I’m on vacation or anywhere else I don’t have steady high speed internet access, I can’t play the games which I have paid for.
Despite the fee for Xbox Live, networking is almost entirely peer to peer reliant. There are no dedicated servers for games, something which has been long available to PC games with no online fee. The average residential high speed internet connection often does not have an upload bandwidth capable of properly supporting large amounts of players. This results in lag and allows for exploits relying on network manipulation, for example the standby cheating which plagued Halo 2.
One would think that the fee for Xbox Live would entitle users to extra content to justify the fee. However, Microsoft allows companies to charge often high prices for nearly every single piece of downloadable content for games. This setup for the Xbox Live Marketplace encourages developers to either purposefully withhold content or release games lacking content with the intent of later releasing and charging an additional fee for the rest of the content. Xbox Live’s content setup may even discourage free content. Epic Games founder Tim Sweeney is quoted in a 1Up Podcast as saying that “We’ve been wanting to give them away for a long time, but actually Microsoft has been pushing back on us for that.” The video game magazine Game Informer supported this in a 2007 issue where they also claimed that Microsoft forces companies to charge for content they wish to distribute. I do not doubt this to be the case, as free content for online PC games has long been the standard. Call of Duty 4 currently has a new downloadable map available for PC users which is absent from the 360 version.
So, what exactly is Xbox Live offering its paying customers? A unified friends list? The same feature has been available to PC gamers through free applications such as XFire and Steam. Put simply, the features of Xbox Live simply do not justify its price when considering the free services offered by the competitors and the robust structure of online PC gaming.
Although I’m sure many are likely to disagree with me and simply respond with “if you don’t like it, don’t pay,” it’s not quite that simple. Without an online service, my games and the console itself lose much of their playability and worth. I also lose contact with my friends who still use Xbox Live. So unless I’m willing to cut off contact with my friends and make my system no longer worth playing, no longer paying for Xbox Live isn’t really an option.
I’d like to hear the thoughts of the rest of the community. I feel that now, in light of the recent Xbox Live downtime, is a good time to start changing Xbox Live for the better.
Ok couple things.
PC users have been doing this for years? Doing what? Playing on line? Of course they have. But if one of you is playing Rainbow Six and the other is playing World of Warcraft you sure as hell aren’t going to be talking unless it is on a cell phone. What if you are poking around on your PC dashboard and a friend wants to invite you to play? How does he know you are there? Face it. On a PC you would need messengers, VoIP, etc.. to achieve the same thing Live does. PSN has a “buddy” list. That buddy list doesn’t mean crap once you are in a game. Once you load a game, your friends outside of said game might as well not exist. It isn’t unified on PS3. Each game has its servers and as such, the separate servers do not communicate. No one playing COD4 online is going to send or receive anything from someone in RFOM. Plain and simple.
DLC should be free? OK… tell that to the PC people who charge for expansion packs. You know… expansion packs, the DLC that is pre-downloaded and burned.
@pixelsword
you said:
“From what I hear, XBL is great, but from what this dude is saying, it’s not all that great at all. Ads suck on top of all of the other stuff (no dedicated servers, and the like) I hate ads, especially if you’re paying for it. I also heard that XBL is laggy, but from what this guy is saying (p2p) I fully understand why now.”
From what you hear? Please don’t tell me you are commenting on something you don’t own or use! LOL It is not laggy and in the entire 6-7 years Live has existed, the past ten days are the only problems they have had. And why? Too many NEW users.
I agree live is not worth it, PSN is better and its free.
Funny how someone simply mentions PSN and he’s instantly flagged a fanboy.
Look, there’s no argument. PSN, while not as popular, is better-managed, more affordable, not to mention XBL won’t allow developers to put up free contect. Epic even said something about a game they put up that they said would be free, but MS tacked a price on it behind Epic’s back.
I may be a 360 fan, but I’m not in denial. PSN is the better service. =(
Besides, it’s not bad to criticize your favorite console. In fact, it’s good.
Criticism is a driving force to make products better. But obviously MS won’t hear of any criticism. I love my 360.. but I’m starting to feel bitter towards MS. Doing everything with a wad of cash either in hand or in mind.
This isn’t the first time, though, that MS has banned someone who brought bad news about them.
Easy fix here.
Sue MS.
They have no legal grounds to support themselves on. Maybe the forum thread could be dismissed as it is MS-run and free of charge, but someone being removed from XBL, a PAY service, just because he criticized their system.. that’s damn near illegal, right? He has grounds to sue them and they have no backing.
i agree with what he said about game content 100% .. you can see how games like Forza2 (just for example) would have content taken out of them before release just so we can be fleeced at a later date
but as for live!! problems over christmas ive got to say that something like this was going to happen sooner or later.. someone obviously underestimated the amount of activity over the xmas period and the system crashed on its arse,, shit happens, but unfortunately on this occasion the problem just happened to have millions of subscribers..
no doubt the someone in question at MS has had their arses kicked for not realising how many films were gonna be d/l’d ,or that every new console bought over xmas was gonna have to d/l an update.. it was just bad luck it happened when everyone was on holiday and no one was there to fix it
the same thing happens every single year on mobile phone networks on new years eve.. they always under estimate the amount of texts being sent. this year a rep from ‘orange’ was on radio1 saying how much extra bandwidth they’d allowed for messaging on the 31st, but still as big ben chimed my phone died on its arse as i tried to text friends and family……………..
ive made mistakes and i live and learn, lets just hope MS do the same
I was talking to William Powell… so next time you say something so stupid as your last comment, you should actually read what I said! Honestly halo 2 and 3 are nothing special people every where have been playing games just as good on pc with the free features. Iam sorry but I will not inlist to xbox live ial play psn for free. Wow I don’t have 2,000 plus games for live or w/e it is. Psn will reach or be better than XBL one day I can’t wait to see you eat your own words….
@BiG Yed
what service do you have? I have virgin mobile and my phone told me may actions were illegal when I tried to send a text message.
@ Wolf26pack:
I have R&C, and I think I’ll try it after work. Thanks!
@ depressed
You said:
“From what you hear? Please don’t tell me you are commenting on something you don’t own or use!”
I never commented on it, I said it sounded like or I understand through experience. You don’t have to own XBL to know that P2P sucks; and even if I did commented, I’d be doing it off of someone’s experience.\
For example, tell me if I’m wrong:
1. XBL has ads. I gather that they do. Ads suck. That’s a comment, yet I never seen an ad, but it’s true, isn’t it? or do you love your ads, because those ads keep XBL free? Oh, it’s not free? Okay then.
You also said:
“LOL It is not laggy and in the entire 6-7 years Live has existed, the past ten days are the only problems they have had.”
That’s a lie: they also had problems when they claimed that “all six million users logged on at the same time”… that was a different situation, but it was a problem nethertheless. and P2P can become laggy with many people online, so even if it’s not laggy, it’s not the doings of XBL… it’s the doings of whomever hosted that game.
Ok, just to clear a couple of things up, as it’s a hanging point.
XBL is NOT a pier to pier thing, there are servers involved (does no-one remember all the rucas when EA wanted to use their own servers for game server hosting?)
The network has cost Microsoft in excess of 500million dollars (reference http://www.news.com/Microsoft pushes Xbox online/2100-1040_3-965830.html)
and yes I am a little stung that it was not up when I wanted to use it, but hey, you find a company that uses server based architecture that didn’t suffer over christmas, FFS my parents could not update their iPods as connection to Europe’s iTunes servers were maxed out!
Give MS a break, it is one of the cleverest, most advanced consumer connection networks in the world, there are bound to be issues every once in a while.
i think your rong on , not a peer 2 peer service for game play..
And if EA had been aloud to set up there own game servers, do you not think we might of had huge multi player games like war hawk on the ps3..
There no getting away from it xbox live has been a huge cash cow for microsoft and thay dont give much in return for your xbox live gold accounts..
Its time for micrsoft to start feeding there cash cow…
@ashliegh
still, when we can’t bitch about gay crap happening on halo, we find the next thing that could even slightly tick us off.
Hey guys, just wanted to give you a heads up that nothing happened to my account. The invalid GamerTag issue was just temporary. I’ll admit it was pretty odd though, I first noticed it in Call of Duty 4 when a friend of mine pointed out that my name no longer showed up on the Leaderboards and was instead replaced by several ? characters. It’s since returned to normal. Ironically enough, the night my GamerTag was invalid I had no trouble getting games in Call of Duty 4 with my party but since then it’s been a hassle and flat-out impossible on one particularly frustrating hour-long occasion.
I just glanced over my letter again and noticed a couple typos and wording errors. The letter wasn’t proofread or anything; to be honest, it was actually written in between Law and Order: SVU commercials on Tuesday night. Normally I’d put a bit more effort in, but I was expecting the thread to be quickly silenced in the form of a lock or deletion. However, I wasn’t expecting this much support from the community. Thanks guys, I’m glad to see there are others who feel the way I do. I’m not a cheap person, but I do believe that consumers deserve much better treatment than what they commonly receive from larger companies.
I’ve attempted to contact the forum moderator who locked my post regarding why a topic promoting civil and organized discussion was locked, but I am yet to receive a reply and doubt I will. I’ve noticed others have reposted my letter and those threads have also been locked, but now without the person responsible posting, thus giving me no one to contact. I’m considering reposting the letter with a specific note to the moderators as well as a link to the Digg that you guys created.
I am good friend of DWells55X, in fact he’s the one who directed me to this page. He’s posting a comment right now as well (I don’t know which one of us will finish first). We don’t why his gamertag is messed up. Last night we were playing some CoD4 and in the leaderboards his name showed up as “?????”. In the lobby it showed up fine but in the leaderboards it was all weird. His rank,kills,deaths,etc all showed up fine but the name just said “?????”. So unless he’s figured it out in the last 5 mins since I talked to him, nobody knows what going on with his name.
I’d also just like to say DWells55X has an extremely hot cousin.
@ashleigh:
“XBL is NOT a pier to pier thing, there are servers involved (does no-one remember all the rucas when EA wanted to use their own servers for game server hosting?)”
—
Although Xbox Live does use centralized servers for remote data such as the friends list, that’s about it. Think of it like AOL Instant Messenger – you have your buddy list and ads coming from their server and your messages go through their servers, but as soon as you do anything else (like file transfer), it’s peer to peer. Voice chat, game hosting, etc. are done using peer to peer bandwidth. Xbox Live uses servers to organize the players together, but from that point on it’s the users’ bandwidth responsible for the games.
@mister needles
“still, when we can’t bitch about gay crap happening on halo, we find the next thing that could even slightly tick us off.”
—
Actually, I quit Halo 3 as soon as Call of Duty 4 came out. I’d played Halo 2 online pretty much every day since its release, but Halo 3 is a letdown for me and I’ve become tired of Bungie’s attitude towards the more hardcore and competitive portion of their community. My letter was not just a rant about something that “slightly ticked me off,” it’s something that recently occurred to me and I felt like sharing.
@TVTiZtiK
I can’t believe you just did that. Once I invent a way to slap people over the internet, you’re first.
@DWells
Theres already away to slap over the internet. It’s called DDoS. Don’t be such a script kiddie.
@dwells55 I hear that, but since I heard of the army halo 3 contest (today) I decided to go back to the faggocity.
@TVTiZtiK
PICS NAO!!!!!
@ depressed
Expansion Packs Usually have to do with MMO’s or Strategy Games and include a vast chunk of extra’s worthy of being paid for. Not just a costume change or a couple of extra cars and one extra Playable Character. Most Expansion packs Include whole Islands and vast lands with many more objectives to complete. Now I have never bought an expansion pack myself but have seen some on the PSN. Such as Cars that are already in-game if you unlock them now obviously this is just EA nickel & diming players who aren’t really players. I have also seen DLC for Folklore which I really can’t comment on as for content but I bet it is nothing like a true Expansion pack for the PC. Same thing with DLC for Motorstorm a couple of cars for $3.49 here and some tracks for $4.99 there. It can end up adding up. It is just not the same as a true Expansion pack to me. The way I combat it though is to buy the game later in it’s life when it has gone down in price and then slowly purchase the DLC and end up paying a price pretty close to the Original Retail price. I may not get to play the game immeadeatly but I’m in no hurry.
@ pixelsword
No Problem
I do not agree,
I don’t like to play on pc that’s why I don’t mind to pay for playing online
live is an enterteinment service not a basic need like water or power you won’t die if you can’t play online or your arcade games for three weeks.
live seems to have been fixed hasn’t it? I mean I can now find and stay in games.