January 8, 2008 – 10:34 pm
Yes, Xbox Live is down AGAIN. Seriously. What. the. fuck. I can’t login, meaning yet again, no Live Arcade games for me. According to the Xbox Support page right now (10:30pm EST):
Xbox Live Marketplace users may experience intermittent issues with billing related transactions (such as the purchasing of premium content), presence functionality (such as logging into Xbox Live), posting statistics, storage downloads, matchmaking, and messaging.
We are aware of the issue and actively working toward a resolution. We apologize for any inconvenience.
You know, I can understand that Microsoft took on a lot of users. I can understand a server or two going down for a day or two or three. But seriously people, what the hell. This is into three weeks of piss poor service. Three weeks. Everyone is getting really sick of this. I had such a huge desire to co-op Halo 3, which started before Christmas. And guess what? I haven’t been able to… since before Christmas. Back to Wii and PS3, since their services (which don’t go down) don’t prevent me from playing my single player games.
December 30, 2007 – 12:06 am
Another night, more problems with Xbox Live. I think it’s time to put a ton of money into some new servers there guys. Bragging about the best Holiday lineup ever for months, and then having your flagship service go down, causing tons of issues of both single player and online play? Not the best way to roll into 2008. According to the Xbox Support page currently:
Users may experience issues logging into Xbox Live. We are aware of the issue and are currently working to resolve it. We apologize for any inconvenience.
I personally can’t sign in. Which means I can’t play my Arcade games. I have friends over who wanted to play some Street Fighter 2. Yep, there’s no chance of that happening, since this is nowhere near my first console. I’m paying good money for this service, and it’s causing me to not be able to play games offline. Not making me happy right now.
[Update] Even though the service is quoted as running fine right now (2pm EST), I still can’t connect. An Xbox Live Connection Test passes everything except Xbox Live. Good times.
[Update 2] As of 2:45pm EST, Xbox support page is now saying the service is down, with the same message as quoted above.
December 28, 2007 – 7:34 pm
We’ve had reports coming in over the past week of gamers not being able to connect to Xbox Live. While I haven’t seen any problems myself, a couple members of our staff have seen issues trying to get into games. According to Xbox.com right now:
Users may experience intermittent issues with tournaments, posting statistics, matchmaking, and sending messages. Additionally Halo 3 users may experience issues joining matches or posting statistics. We are aware of the issue and are actively working towards a resolution. We apologize for any inconvenience.
It seems like Live has been having some issues ever since Halo 3 was released. Has Microsoft hit a level of usage that the current servers can’t keep up with? It certainly seems that way. Maybe it’s time for some back end upgrades? We’ll keep you posted on what we hear about the status of the service. If you’ve had any problems, be sure to let us know in the comments.
December 28, 2007 – 10:23 am
Well with the excitement of RockBand upon us all, many of those good boys and girls that waited so eagerly to open their bundles of RockBand made a rather rude discovery. Their peripherals were broken, this could range from a nonfunctional guitar, broken whammy bar, a strum bar that had a mind of it’s own or a wonky microphone that doesn’t register correctly. All in all it is a pretty upsetting discovery once you get everything unpacked and decide to sit down and get some gaming in, especially for a game that costs $170.
Well the good news is that EA/Harmonix is aware of the problems and actually has a website dedicated to rectifying the issues. Pretty much you log in and set up an EA account and then let them know, which peripheral is FUBAR. After that it will ask for your shipping info and give you an option of them sending a new peripheral out via two day air delivery and charging you $125 fee, to make sure that you send your broken one back, or you can go the none charging route and just request a prepaid box and wait for that to arrive. Being impatient and pretty cheesed about my wireless guitar playing like an old shoe, I chose the 2 day option.
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December 5, 2007 – 5:51 pm
I swear to God, I’m so fed up with broken Xbox 360’s. This is my f’ing 8th console to die. MY F’ING 8TH!!!!!!! Quality Assurance my ass. This is ridiculous. This is piss poor product development and testing.
Like I’ve said before, I haven’t had any other systems die on me. Ever. The Xbox 360 is the only system ever to break. And now I’ve gone through 8 of them. Tonight, after grabbing the new Fall Dashboard Update, it started making weird noises and froze up in Guitar Hero 3. When I turned it off and back on… guess what? Yep. Red Ring of Death. Good times people. Good times.
It’s not like I treat it like crap. It’s babied. My Xbox 360 has it’s own shelf in the entertainment center, with full ventilation from the front and rear. The power brick also sits on the shelf fully ventilated. The console is never moved when playing (in fact, it’s only moved a tiny bit once a week to dust). The console is kept perfectly clean, as are my other systems. I haven’t had any problems with my PS3 (save long install times) or my Wii. Never had problems with my PS2, Xbox, or Gamecube before that.
I really hope someone from Microsoft reads this. This is unacceptable. Once my Best Buy replacement plan is up, I’m done. Having 8 consoles fail on me in a little over 2 years is ludicrous. I’m sorry Halo and Gears of War, but if I have to worry every time I turn the console on that it might die, it’s not worth my trouble. Which is just really sad. I love the games on Xbox 360. I really do. But until they get the manufacturing issues worked out, it’s not worth the hassle anymore in my eyes.
Here’s to hoping your 360’s don’t die from the update. Cheers.
December 4, 2007 – 11:46 am
Next time you turn on your Xbox 360, you’ll be prompted for the ever loving Fall Dashboard Update. The update definitely speeds up the dash and adds some nifty new features. But it also had one slightly annoying change that I wanted to let you know about.
The dashboard update resets your global game settings. So if you set your Y Axis as Inverted in the dashboard so all your games are auto-set to Inverted, you’re going to have to go back and redo this. Any other changes you made in here will have to be redone as well.
To make this change, click on your gamertag at the top of the screen, then go to Game Defaults. The Y Axis setting is under Action, but make sure to check everything else in case you had changes you forgot about.
I’m finally able to auto sign-in to Xbox Live again for the first time since the Spring Dashboard Update, which is a plus. Let us know of anything else the dash update changed that you’re a big fan of (other than divx people).
November 18, 2007 – 6:15 pm
Well score another win for the enigmatic RROD! It has taken claim of another Xbox 360, namely mine this time. Unfortunately this will hinder some reviews on my part but I hope to take a trip to my nearest Best Buy and get this remedied right quick. If anyone from MS happens upon this post just know that as I type this there nothing but spite in my letters as I look at my controller flash and my console show off it’s three sexy red lights. So many games to play and now I am down one system, at least I have some PS3 titles to get me through, thanks for the head aches Microsoft.
November 14, 2007 – 3:56 pm
Ever since the downtime for Xbox Live a couple days ago, Xbox.com has become increasingly annoying. It’s even slower than it was before (which is hard to accomplish). The other thing that really bugs me is having to put in my Windows Live password every single time I open a browser and load the page.
For the record, I’m not clearing or blocking cookies. I’ve tested this in Firefox, Opera, and Safari and am getting the same thing with all browsers. I haven’t tested IE, so anyone out there with Windows: please let me know how it goes there.
I thought these scheduled downtimes were improvements to the system? I was really expecting things to at least speed up.
October 9, 2007 – 1:38 pm
After just over 5 months, my Xbox 360 Elite has kicked the bucket. I get disk read errors on every disk I put in the tray, whether it’s a game, movie, or audio disk. Good times.
This marks my 6th Xbox 360 to die since launch day. Yes, my 6th. F’ing ridiculous.
I know some people are going to jump all over this in comments saying I treat it badly or whatever, but that is far from the case. My Xbox 360 has it’s own shelf in the entertainment center, with full ventilation from the front and rear. The power brick also sits on the shelf fully ventilated. The console is never moved when playing (in fact, it’s only moved a tiny bit once a week to dust). The console is kept perfectly clean, as are my other systems. I haven’t had any problems with my PS3 (save long install times) or my Wii. Never had problems with my PS2, Xbox, or Gamecube before that.
I guess I’ll be making a trip to Best Buy this afternoon to get this thing swapped out. Maybe #7 will be a lot luckier than the first 6 consoles I’ve gone through. At least I didn’t get the red ring of death again this time.
October 6, 2007 – 8:44 pm
If you grabbed a copy of Knocked Up on HD-DVD and are having troubles with the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player and getting this disc to even load, you’re not the only one. I spent a good hour tonight trying to get this disc to play, including a return trip to Best Buy because I thought I got a crap disc. I finally found a solution over at AVS Forum. The people over there are amazing.
- Go to the System blade
- Go down and select Memory
- Go down and Select HD Player (NOT Hard Drive)
- Go down to the bottom entry. More than likely, it will be the largest entry in the list. When the cookie is fully downloaded, it will be 11 MB in size. When I checked for the cookie, it was 1MB in size (at the time i stopped the download). [for me, it was the first in the list, but I deleted all entries in the HD-DVD drive]
- When you have found the entry, DELETE IT.
- Retry starting the movie and wait for the loading screen. When you see it, you will know you have succeeded.
Once you do that, the disc should load up fine and come to a loading screen where it will sit for about 10 minutes. Do NOT hit Cancel, because that will just mess up the cookie download, which will bring you back to the same point of the disc not playing.
Seriously, if either of the HD disc formats wants to win the format war, they need to stop making things so damn complicated for the average user.
