I didn't have any problems playing COD4 the other night or sending voice messages but I still have issues downloading some content and I can't seem to send picture messages to any of my friends.

I've actually avoided playing with people recently because I figured these problems would hinder our fun and I hoped they would be resolved soon. I am curious to see how they compensate for this interruption. Free months of Live get tossed around for almost every issue they have, so while I am sure it'll be a reimbursement of monthly costs, I think another perk or freebie would be a nice gesture as well.

If my cable and phone went down as much as this for as long as this, I would drop them. When you have over 700 $ tied up into Xbox, it is kind of hard to "drop" them.

Looks like we're we're getting a free Arcade game for our trouble:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080104/...soft_xbox_dc_3

I didn't contribute to that.

nice offer from Microsoft.

I bought Halo 3 and I'm not even a Halo fan. But that's what I knew all my online buddies would play, and it does have some good customizability and funny modes (Zombies, Rocket Race, etc) Of course, all of them moved to Call of Duty 4. I'm not going that far. I REALLY don't like realistic-style FPS games.

Me either, I just stole my brothers. I hope we get to chose whatever we want, not from some predetermined list.

It'll be from a list, guaranteed.

I have the perfect solution for this conundrum.

Do you mean the setting? CoD4 isn't realistic at all, really. You don't have an energy shield and you'll die faster than you might in Halo, but as you rank up, you unlock so many different things to customize your kits that it's just insane.

CoD4 is far and away the most fun online shooter I've ever played just barely beating out TF2

http://blogs.chron.com/gamehacks/200...ston_over.html

January 04, 2008
Microsoft sued in Houston over Xbox Live outage

"Three Houston-area residents filed a federal class-action lawsuit Friday against Microsoft, claiming a breach of contract after they couldn't connect to Xbox Live, the company's online-gaming subscription service.

The lawsuit, filed by gamers in Houston, Pearland and Beaumont, says Microsoft failed to live up to its promises in December, when strong holiday sales added more online gamers than its servers could handle.

Microsoft should have anticipated that the upswing in sales -- about 4 million units were sold in the last three months of 2007 -- would create issues that its hardware couldn't handle, according to the lawsuit.

"XBOX Live crashed and prevented Plaintiffs around the world from accessing online play for several weeks," the court documents states. "Specifically, interruptions in game-play kicked many Plaintiffs offline of XBOX Live and displayed messages such as "Server Error." Other Plaintiffs have been unable to sign into XBOX Live at all or use advertised features such as 'match-make" or "account recovery," despite paying for these services in their yearly subscription dues."

The lawsuit doesn't specify damages, but alludes that the claim will exceed $5 million.

Houston attorney Jason A. Gibson filed the suit on behalf of the gamers. Read the full document here.

Microsoft tried to appease angry Xbox Live users after the holiday issue by offering a free game from Xbox Live Arcade. These three plaintiffs, and who knows how many more will join them, aren't buying.

This isn't the first legal challenge of Microsoft's Xbox Live. Last year, an Atlanta man sued the company, claiming its renewal policy amounted to "systematic consumer fraud" because his underage son was allowed to renew a subscription using his debit card.

Did any of you out there have problems using Xbox Live over the holidays? Are you still having those issues?"


5 million dollars?

Hard... but not impossible. I knew that SOME elements of the 360 experience were tied to Live (like playing arcade games after receiving a different console for RRoD)... that was bad enough. But when I couldn't play some of my disc-based 360 games because a "required" update could not be downloaded and it took multiple attempts to get the dashboard responsive (waiting for it to timeout) that was just too much (and a surprise) for me.

I've had my 360 since launch day. I've had a blast with the games that I've played. But it's time for me to move on.

I Hope they give out a new game, not something that's been out a while (or at least offer an option). I wasn't really happy about not getting anything when Carcassonne came out for free (since I bought it on launch day), but I didn't lose any sleep over that. But to lose services, I just want the number of days it's been shitty refunded to me (either monetarily, through points, or an addition of days to my account). An 800 point game would certainly be renumeration for that, but getting another "free game" I already have like Catan would piss me off royally.

two weeks is roughly $2. Personally I'd rather them give me a $5 or $10 game.

I was trying to play some SF2 and that crap was laggy as hell.

I can see being pissed, but I think suing for 5 million is juuuust a bit overboard. How often and for how long has Live been down (unplanned) in the past? I do think some remuneration would be a good thing; I wouldn't mind a free game from a list, as long as the list is somewhat long.
If you were playing an offline game, couldn't you unplug the network cable (or disconnect the wireless adapter)? You'd still log in to your gamertag, and if you needed an update for a game, it would download the next time you logged in to Live, wouldn't it?
I can see being pissed, but I can't see getting rid of my 360 because of this. If I were a hardcore online gamer, maybe.
Hopefully this was just a seasonal surge and Live actually does have the infrastructure to support everyone going online. I know that since I plugged in the network cable, if I'm on the 360, I'm online (granted not really transferring a lot of data, but still). I wonder if that will continue to affect this.

I think it's a stretch to call joking about how Indian reps often use American names "racism".

I wish they would just give us Xbox points so I could DL more songs for rockband

At this point I could care less about the free game. Just fix the damned thing. Shut it down for a day or whatever it takes to fix it but just fix it !!!!!!!!!!!

I filled out the comment card that came with my returned 360 and gave them the lowest marks I could because, regardless of race or grasp of the English language, they had some of the worst CS agents I ever tried to get a honest and complete response from.

I still get the rotating dot screen on all my blades except for media, even though I apparently do log in since my friends show up on the popups. If I start a game from disc I can get to the gamertag panel that way. As soon as I back out to the Xbox dashboard, I get the rotating dots again. Is anyone else having this issue? Pisses me off since I can't get t o my Arcade games.

This was happening to me last week when they were having issues, but not since.

2 things...try refreshing all of your network settings, or completely re-do them. I'm talking a hard reset on your modem and router, set a static IP, set the 360 into a DMZ on your router, use openDNS.org for your DNS. I've had only minimal issues since doing that, even last week. In fact, most of my issues have been with CoD4 in particular, regardless of Live issues. I have had no issues with Halo, Rock Band, or Guitar Hero III.

Try this I found it on the xbox forums.

THINGS TO TRY

If the Xbox LIVE Marketplace is unavailable because of system maintenance, waiting several minutes resolves this issue.

You may have to delete some cached Marketplace data that is stored on your console. This will not delete the Marketplace content that you have purchased.

To delete cached Marketplace data, follow these steps:

1. In the System section of the Xbox Dashboard, select Memory.
2. Select your storage device, and then select System Items.
3. Select Marketplace Data, select Delete, and then press the A button.
4. Select Yes, and then press the A button.

COD4 is still very problematic. Saw this the other day:

"An Open Letter To Microsoft: So really, what *ARE* we paying for?

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."

http://forums.xbox.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=17809534

What is Xbox Live Diamond?