Microsoft gives Xbox Live users free month following outage

[Rick]

Microsoft is offering a free month of Xbox Live to subscribers affected by the company's Xbox Live and Cloud Saved Games outage over the weekend. XBL general manager Alex Garden says the free one-month extension will be applied automatically to affected accounts, so there's no need to file a claim or otherwise contact support.

During the outage, users unsuccessfully attempting to access Microsoft's Cloud Saved Games feature reported seeing the following cryptic error code: 0x807b0198. Some Xbox Live users were unable to access the service entirely while others had issues accessing certain apps or experienced other XBL irregularities.

The precise cause of the outage remains unknown, but Microsoft said it has identified and resolved the underlying issue responsible for the unfortunate snafu. Garden also said the software maker will be running a thorough post-mortem to identify any other issues and hopefully prevent the possible reoccurrence of a similar issue.

Interestingly, Microsoft sold 750,000 Xbox Live 360 consoles over Thanksgiving weekend -- a remarkable number for an otherwise aging console. Xbox Live itself celebrated its 10th anniversary in November.

Word of an Xbox 720 has been grinding away in the rumor mill over the past couple of years, but the latest clues suggest the next-gen console could debut near the end of 2013. Xbox World also revealed that the Xbox 720 will come bundled with 8GB of system memory, a Blu-ray drive, Kinect 2.0 support and boast four cores with eight logical threads.

At the time of this writing, all Xbox-related services appear to be operational at the Xbox Live Status page.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/51200-microsoft-gives-xbox-live-users-free-month-following-outage.html

 

[soldier1969]

Good hustle on the blu ray, but no thanks. My current gaming PC already out classes the 720 or whatever it will be a year from now.

 

[Xclusiveitalian]

Congrats on your 1 free month, how much have you spent so far for online..$200..$300...if you had it since day one it's been what $600? No thanks. Free on PC, wii, and ps3. Sucker born every min.

 

[9Nails]

Oh, didn't notice it was down. Guess I don't get a free month.

 

[NTAPRO]

Gaming pcs are so 2012. get with the times mannnnnnnn

Good hustle on the blu ray, but no thanks. My current gaming PC already out classes the 720 or whatever it will be a year from now.

 

[misor]

This should be a wake up call for gaming companies that the cloud is not the ultimate solution.
it serves as a good adjunct service.

good move from microsoft to offer a month of free service.

at blizzard, how about fixing d3 constant connection error 3003?

 

[hahahanoobs]

This should be a wake up call for gaming companies that the cloud is not the ultimate solution.
it serves as a good adjunct service.

XBOX Live is not "in the cloud", but the game saves were.

 

[oldikes]

Congrats on your 1 free month, how much have you spent so far for online..$200..$300...if you had it since day one it's been what $600? No thanks. Free on PC, wii, and ps3. Sucker born every min.

didnt know you could party chat on wii or PS3, and thats worth every penny to me. Not to mention that not once yet have I had all my personal info stolen from a server with unencrypted passwords.

PC ftw, but I couldnt use any console without party chat.

 

[m4a4]

Congrats on your 1 free month, how much have you spent so far for online..$200..$300...if you had it since day one it's been what $600? No thanks. Free on PC, wii, and ps3. Sucker born every min.

Hahaha, laughing at people for paying for convenience? Gee, don't you look smart.

Why don't you next laugh at Netflix users for watching movies you can get for free too?? /endSarcasm

 

[yukka]

I use Xbox Live. I like it. The chat system is hugely superior to the offerings on Wii and PS3 allowing voice comms between people playing different games or just with the console turned on. Its not as much as an MMO each month but the service rarely goes down. Not sure what the problem is. Free might be better but then would the service be as well delivered.

 

[Burty117]

Congrats on your 1 free month, how much have you spent so far for online..$200..$300...if you had it since day one it's been what $600? No thanks. Free on PC, wii, and ps3. Sucker born every min.

So the PS3, personal details stolen and no where near as user friendly as the Xbox? plus the service was down for a whole month and a bit which is longer than all Xbox Live outages put together?

Wii, well it was so god damn hard for me to even attempt to use the Wii's "online capability's" I gave up, the most I got out if it was BBC iPlayer and software updates, if either of those consoles tried to charge me for using those Abysmal services I would tell them where to shove it.

Xbox Live doesn't have random hackings, the service is almost always up and working quickly and has plenty of content to offer, plus what everyone else here has already mentioned. The Xbox gets quite a few goodies as well when you have a gold account such as extra unlock able content, free music videos etc...

Come to think of it I'm not sure whether your post was just a trolling attempt >.<

 

[cmbjive]

Moral of the story: Stick to saving your stuff on your hard drive and use the cloud as a backup.

 

[meggamonkey]

Xbox for life ... l never really did like play station + there tech support sucks

 

[PinothyJ]

Congrats on your 1 free month, how much have you spent so far for online..$200..$300...if you had it since day one it's been what $600? No thanks. Free on PC, wii, and ps3. Sucker born every min.

So the PS3, personal details stolen and no where near as user friendly as the Xbox? plus the service was down for a whole month and a bit which is longer than all Xbox Live outages put together?

Wii, well it was so god damn hard for me to even attempt to use the Wii's "online capability's" I gave up, the most I got out if it was BBC iPlayer and software updates, if either of those consoles tried to charge me for using those Abysmal services I would tell them where to shove it.

Xbox Live doesn't have random hackings, the service is almost always up and working quickly and has plenty of content to offer, plus what everyone else here has already mentioned. The Xbox gets quite a few goodies as well when you have a gold account such as extra unlock able content, free music videos etc...

Come to think of it I'm not sure whether your post was just a trolling attempt >.<

Except you have proved your argument invalid by committing the strawman fallacy: misrepresenting their argument so it is easier to attack. The argument by Xclusiveitalian was in regards to paying for an online service that other systems get for free. It is only if Xclusiveitalian was commenting on the outage itself that the mere mention of the PSN outage and subsequent fallout would be appropriate. You did not even touch their argument, instead created an argument out of straw that looked like theirs, chopped its head off and proclaimed yourself the winner whilst Xclusiveitalian's argument remains unscathed.

Congrats on your 1 free month, how much have you spent so far for online..$200..$300...if you had it since day one it's been what $600? No thanks. Free on PC, wii, and ps3. Sucker born every min.

didnt know you could party chat on wii or PS3, and thats worth every penny to me. Not to mention that not once yet have I had all my personal info stolen from a server with unencrypted passwords.

PC ftw, but I couldnt use any console without party chat.

It is a difficult one when it comes to 'party chat' as it is a lot more insidious than first glance would betray. There have been many voices in the gaming journalism world who have made note of Live's 'party chat' being the slow downfall of gaming. Any article that deals with bullying and harassment in gaming will almost always come from the aforementioned service. In addition to that, any game worth its salt on any platform would, should and is not work picking up if it does not, have voice communication. The only point to be argued is whether the ability to communicate with people playing other games to you is worth the comparatively large sum of money you pay for the subscription service. The point will almost become out-numbered when Valve's Steambox hits production as it will have a far superior chat service for 100% zero addition or on-going cost to the end-user.

Plus, whilst not relevant to the points and argument made above, it is important to note that it is from Live and its party chat that GfWL was born -- the most hated and buggy and intrusive and painful community DRM solution on the market. But hey, that is neither here-nor-there.


...

 

[oldikes]

Except you have proved your argument invalid by committing the strawman fallacy: misrepresenting their argument so it is easier to attack. The argument by Xclusiveitalian was in regards to paying for an online service that other systems get for free. It is only if Xclusiveitalian was commenting on the outage itself that the mere mention of the PSN outage and subsequent fallout would be appropriate. You did not even touch their argument, instead created an argument out of straw that looked like theirs, chopped its head off and proclaimed yourself the winner whilst Xclusiveitalian's argument remains unscathed.


It is a difficult one when it comes to 'party chat' as it is a lot more insidious than first glance would betray. There have been many voices in the gaming journalism world who have made note of Live's 'party chat' being the slow downfall of gaming. Any article that deals with bullying and harassment in gaming will almost always come from the aforementioned service. In addition to that, any game worth its salt on any platform would, should and is not work picking up if it does not, have voice communication. The only point to be argued is whether the ability to communicate with people playing other games to you is worth the comparatively large sum of money you pay for the subscription service. The point will almost become out-numbered when Valve's Steambox hits production as it will have a far superior chat service for 100% zero addition or on-going cost to the end-user.

Plus, whilst not relevant to the points and argument made above, it is important to note that it is from Live and its party chat that GfWL was born -- the most hated and buggy and intrusive and painful community DRM solution on the market. But hey, that is neither here-nor-there.


...

Gotta agree with GFWL there. Removing party chat, I might add, would only force me to mute the thousands of children that thinking abusing their right to talk is cool. and pretty much force no voice chat at all amongst games. If I play a game competitively anymore (so it has been since halos downfall) its on PC, where I can talk to mature people with getting sqeeked at.