MS: Merry Christmas! No Xbox Live [Update: Or Savegames] For You!
Author: Rees | Date: December 30, 2007
Okay, So It’s Not Quite This Bad…
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m an MS fanboy at heart (when it comes to consoles, anyway), and I appreciate that it’s the busiest time of the year for Live, so I should be quite forgiving. Not in this case, though, as it seems Microsoft have been slacking off, and, surprise surprise, thanks to the popularity of the 360 this Christmas, account signup (as well as a few other things) is well-and-truly broken.
How do I know that Microsoft are slacking off? Well, this Bungie weekly update gives us a hint:
“…there won’t be a Holiday playlist in the vein of our fun Halloween list – the reason being that nobody is around here or at Xbox Live to make sure it doesn’t assplode.”
Excuse me? There’s nobody around at Xbox Live to make sure it doesn’t die a horrible death? At the time of year when it’s going to be inundated with new account signups, and people just wanting to chill and play some games over the festive season?
This, Microsoft, is very poor form indeed.
But how does this rant come about? I’ve been an Xbox Live member for donkey’s, after all, and I don’t generally play online a lot anyway. Well, you see, I got a new memory unit for Christmas, and promptly managed to leave it (with my profile on) round a friend’s house, meaning that I couldn’t access Xbox Live. No problem, the account recovery tool is here to save me, so I decide to recover my account onto my HDD.
But oh noes! Error message! Account Singup is temporarily unavailable!
No matter. I manage to retrieve the memory unit, plug it in, and…
Oh.
The profile on there is out-of-date, as the “new” nonexistent copy I downloaded replaces it.
This was yesterday morning, and I’ve been trying to recover my account ever since. True, MS have acknowledged the issues on the Xbox Live Support site, and when the status changed today to “up and running”, I decided to give it another go. And you know what?
It failed.
Again.
On the bright side, I immediately went back in and tried again, and it seems to be recovering – albeit incredibly slowly (slower than usual, and that’s quite a feat). Hopefully it’ll make it to the end and this will just be a distant memory that I can laugh about with my grandkids. For millions of kids all over the world who unwrapped their lovely new 360 on Christmas morning, though, and haven’t been able to sign up for an account ever since, this is going to leave a very, very sour taste in their mouths.
Microsoft, how could you be so stupid?
-
[Update]
I did finally get my account to recover, but now I’ve lost all my savegames! I’m hoping for a RRoD next just to top the weekend off. Perhaps it is time I got a Wii.











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