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Print 36 comment(s) - last by T4RTER S4UCE.. on Jan 24 at 9:02 PM

The Xbox Live Arcade game "Undertow"  (Source: Microsoft)
Xbox Live game "Undertow" free of charge as compensation

While Microsoft’s Xbox Live online system is generally reliable, Xbox 360 gamers found throughout the holidays less than satisfactory service. Gamers widely reported problems using Xbox Live, which Microsoft said was caused by the influx of new subscribers.

“As a result of this massive increase in usage we know that some of you experienced intermittent Xbox LIVE issues over the holiday break,” said Marc Whitten, general manager for Xbox Live, earlier this month. “While the service was not completely off-line at any given time, we are disappointed in our performance.”

Microsoft promised all Xbox Live users, both new and old, compensation for the downtime in the form of a full Xbox Live Arcade game that will be available for download free of charge.

Today, Microsoft’s Gamerscore Blog revealed that the free game available to all Silver and Gold Xbox Live members will be Undertow. Developed by Chair Entertainment, Undertow is an aquatic shooter with story driven-single player campaign, on and offline co-op, and multiplayer for 2-16 players.

Undertow will be downloadable free of charge for all Xbox Live users 2:00 a.m., January 23 through 11:59 p.m., January 27 (Pacific Standard Time).

Those who have already purchased Undertow are recommended to contact their Xbox local support, though Microsoft did not detail whether users who already own the game will receive a refund or a different free title.

Update 1/23/08: Undertow is now available for free on Xbox Live Marketplace. Those who have previously purchased the game may contact Xbox support for a refund of their 800 Microsoft Points.

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Not bad
By SomeYoungMan on 1/18/2008 5:39:32 PM , Rating: 5
Undertow is 800 points ($10 USD), has 2 player co-op, 16 player PVP and decent graphics for a XBLA game. It was released on Nov 21, 2007, so it's fairly new.

Other companies (ahem, Blizzard) would've just credited the downtime by tacking on extra days to your subscription. ($49.99 / 365 days ) * 10 days outage = $1.37.

Count me as someone who wasn't affected by the Live problems and got a free game out of it. How many of you were affected? Was it really that bad?




RE: Not bad
By therealnickdanger on 1/18/2008 5:48:04 PM , Rating: 2
Undertow is a decent game. I barely noticed the Live problems mostly due to the fact that I was playing Mass Effect whenever I had time to play. I would rather just have $10 worth of Live service, but I don't really care. I got my 500 points for being a 5yr Live member already, so... meh. Thanks for being considerate, Microsoft!


RE: Not bad
By SomeYoungMan on 1/18/2008 6:00:52 PM , Rating: 2
For it to be worth $10, Live would have to be down for 10 weeks straight.

They implemented a very general solution that's easy for them to do and within their framework. The only people that have a right to complain about this solution are those affected by the outage and either have this game or would never play it. I'm betting that's going to be a very small percentage.

For the rest of us, it's either a free game or it makes no difference. Then the only people left are those that like to complain for the sake of complaining :)

The right thing to do would be to credit the people affected, but I seriously doubt they have that capability since it took them 2 years to fix the problem with people turning 18 and the problem with locked games for different users for returned systems.


RE: Not bad
By BMFPitt on 1/18/2008 6:11:12 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
For it to be worth $10, Live would have to be down for 10 weeks straight.
For it to be worth $10, it would have had to be a game I was interested in. Why not offer "Undertow or 500 XBL Points or a free month of Gold"?


RE: Not bad
By SomeYoungMan on 1/18/2008 6:30:04 PM , Rating: 1
That's the thing though... why would people think they're entitled to $10 worth of compensation. Live wasn't down for 10 weeks.

I think the majority of people that are complaining weren't even inconvenienced by the outage. Seems like the people that are complaining have no right or are playing it up to try to get more for free.

When I read the articles about XBL being down, I went to see for myself and had no problems connecting.

So...who here was directly affected by the outage, and are you happy or unhappy with this compensation?


RE: Not bad
By BMFPitt on 1/19/2008 9:37:13 AM , Rating: 3
quote:
That's the thing though... why would people think they're entitled to $10 worth of compensation. Live wasn't down for 10 weeks.
I didn't say we're entitled to anything. I just said if we're going ot be compensated, it might as well be something that a good number of people would actually want.
quote:
So...who here was directly affected by the outage, and are you happy or unhappy with this compensation?
There was a period of 2 days when I couldn't get a game up with my brothers who had just gotten 360s for Xmas.


RE: Not bad
By psychobriggsy on 1/20/2008 8:20:04 AM , Rating: 5
That's the thing though... why would people think they're entitled to $10 worth of compensation. Live wasn't down for 10 weeks.

That is true, but it was down at a time of the year that people with jobs actually have time to play, so 10 days down over Christmas could be the equivalent of 10 weeks worth of normal online gaming for them.


RE: Not bad
By rivercat on 1/19/2008 12:51:07 PM , Rating: 2
They should have just extended everyone's subscription by two time the trouble-time length.


RE: Not bad
By ajfink on 1/19/2008 8:35:13 PM , Rating: 3
Ditto. I was Mass Effect-ing, so I didn't really notice many problems. When I did try anything on XBL, however, it did take a dump on itself.


RE: Not bad
By T4RTER S4UCE on 1/24/2008 9:02:58 PM , Rating: 2
Only the big games seemed to be down for me, I finally got into TF2 and I gave Shadowrun a little bit of love. They both worked decently.


RE: Not bad
By SomeYoungMan on 1/18/2008 5:51:14 PM , Rating: 4
IGN gave this game an 8.7, the third highest ranked game of all time for XBLA games.
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/836/836872p1.html

Gamespot gave it an 8.2.
Games radar gave it an 8.
Team Xbox gave it an 8.8.
Gamezone gave it a 9.

Microsoft could've picked much worse compensation.


RE: Not bad
By OblivionMage on 1/23/2008 3:46:50 PM , Rating: 3
Blizzard does not do that. They go down all the time to problems with their authentification system/server problems and they don't seem to care..


RE: Not bad
By crimson117 on 1/24/2008 12:51:12 PM , Rating: 2
RE: Not bad
By TomCorelis on 1/23/2008 5:34:21 PM , Rating: 2
I got a bunch of weird error messages about achievements when I was trying to Halo 2 Vista... annoying more than anything else, really.

That being said, I briefly logged on XBL a little after midnight last night, and the the XBLA interface was full of "page unavailable" error messages. I thought they fixed everything!


It's the thought that counts
By clovell on 1/18/2008 5:37:01 PM , Rating: 4
I'm generally not one to complain, and I was even out of town on vacation when this happened - but, what rationale is there for giving Silver and Gold members the same game? Silver members don't pay for the service they get - which is pretty limited. Gold members do pay for it, and rely on it for multiplayer gaming - which comprises the majority of available gameplay in many games. Add this... let's call it an oversight - to the 'sorry, pal' given to the people who have already bought the game, and this apology seems a bit half-assed.

Don't get me wrong - I don't expect a lot. But, it would have been nice if Microsoft had shown that they put a little more thought into this, rather than just throwing a game at us at everyone.




RE: It's the thought that counts
By See Spot Run on 1/18/2008 5:51:20 PM , Rating: 5
Just out of curiosity then, what would have made you happy? Had I even had an xbox, I wouldn't complain about anything free. They could have just said "our bad, better luck next time", but the fact they're actually offering something is impressive (when was the last time a corporation actually offered something in return for downtime/loss of service).

Although I do not own an Xbox, I think this would be adequate enough as a "we're sorry".


RE: It's the thought that counts
By clovell on 1/18/2008 5:59:45 PM , Rating: 2
Ah, I didn't realize this was that good of a game. I stand corrected.


Cool!
By Locutus465 on 1/18/2008 5:51:23 PM , Rating: 2
Don't know if it's a good game or not (looks cool anyway) but I'll take it! :D




RE: Cool!
By jonrem on 1/19/2008 12:58:03 AM , Rating: 2
Might download it myself, but it just adds to the games backlog! Like many of you I've been so busy since the holidays that I haven't really gotten into COD4, Assasains Creed, Mprime 3, SM Galaxy.. etc. I've been playing them concurrently and haven't been sucked in yet. I don't think I have time for a mediocre XBLA game.


Sorta reminds me of....
By Jedi2155 on 1/18/2008 5:37:12 PM , Rating: 2
Aquanox....complete with the antiquated graphics




RE: Sorta reminds me of....
By cmdrdredd on 1/18/2008 9:18:31 PM , Rating: 1
no surprise that it's a shooter. What else do you expect from the xbox360 becides shooters?

I won't download it even though I'm a subscriber to XBL Gold. I'm not a fan of every single shooter game that comes through.


hummm
By hpglow on 1/19/2008 12:29:40 AM , Rating: 2
"What is that sir?" "You mean that the four day window we gave people to download this free game has caused them all to suck up our bandwith downloading it?" "Yes, yes the servers are down again."

I wonder why such a small time frame.




By crystal clear on 1/19/2008 6:57:41 AM , Rating: 2
A repost of my earlier comment-

Gesture
By crystal clear on 1/4/08, Rating: 2
By crystal clear on 1/4/2008 11:05:48 AM , Rating: 2

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it will offer a free downloadable video game to users of its Xbox online gaming service after the network was plagued with connection troubles over the holidays.

Xbox Live General Manager Mark Whitten said the problems stemmed from a "massive increase" in new users of the service over the holiday season, when sales of video game hardware and software surge.

"While the service was not completely offline at any given time, we are disappointed in our performance," Whitten said in a statement.

Whitten said all Xbox Live members around the world would be able to freely download one game over the service. Games sold on Xbox Live typically cost from $5 to $20, and Whitten said Microsoft would give details of the offer in the coming weeks.

http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN0...


http://www.dailytech.com/Microsoft+Moves+43+Millio...

An Open Letter from Marc Whitten about Xbox LIVE this Holiday

And as a thank you for your loyalty during this holiday period, we will be offering all of our Xbox LIVE members around the world access to a full Xbox LIVE Arcade game that will be available to download free of charge. In the coming weeks we will be sharing the specific details of this offer with you.


http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/live/serviceissu...

Now this interesting-

Dealing with Offensive Players
The Internet in general allows for all manner of communications, unfortunately some of it can be negative. Microsoft takes the safety and security of the Xbox LIVE® service seriously, and we continually strive to help customers better control their online experience and provide a safe and enjoyable time on Xbox LIVE.

If you encounter another player who is exhibiting rude, obnoxious, harassing, threatening, offensive, or other inappropriate behavior, here's what you can do:


http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/live/ti-obnoxiou...




niice
By Randum on 1/23/2008 5:03:14 PM , Rating: 2
Well see the timing of the "problems" was key because most of us had off work and school and wanted to play with our new toys, play with relatives out of town etc. so that time is worth more some would say.
either way it is a nice gesture and during the downtime, my halo games were noexistant or i was stuck in a game with high lag so i could go watch tv for 10min so the round would end..
and cod4....well lets just say it was very iffy on whether you could get in a game or not. def not an experience i would want if it was my first week on xbl!
in the end, the good outweighs the bad with XBL in my book




what about the zune outage
By michal1980 on 1/18/08, Rating: -1
RE: what about the zune outage
By IceTron on 1/18/2008 6:46:23 PM , Rating: 1
Uh no, because it didn't effect YOU, just people on the Live network.


RE: what about the zune outage
By michal1980 on 1/18/08, Rating: -1
What about windows?
By Screwballl on 1/18/08, Rating: -1
RE: What about windows?
By EntreHoras on 1/19/2008 12:04:38 PM , Rating: 2
-2


RE: What about windows?
By Chaotic42 on 1/23/2008 5:39:27 PM , Rating: 3
-3

Let's remove the -1 limit and see what happens.


RE: What about windows?
By JustTom on 1/19/2008 7:02:30 PM , Rating: 4
If you installed Vista thousands of times and had very little success maybe, just maybe you need to look at yourself.


RE: What about windows?
By Screwballl on 1/21/08, Rating: -1
RE: What about windows?
By Future145 on 1/22/2008 3:26:21 PM , Rating: 1
Don't use Windows then if you dislike all of them so much.
No one is stopping you from going to Linux.


RE: What about windows?
By Screwballl on 1/23/2008 3:51:31 PM , Rating: 2
I already do, Fedora Core 8, Ubuntu, BSD and playing around with a few other flavors. The only reason I keep a windows installation is for games.


RE: What about windows?
By timmiser on 1/23/08, Rating: 0
RE: What about windows?
By bodar on 1/24/2008 6:54:21 PM , Rating: 2
Putting aside the trolling of the OP, disk imaging software wrecks the hell out of your stellar math there. If Vista didn't have ways to be deployed to multiple PCs at once, it wouldn't be worth a damn in business environments. You think businesses install all their OS's from CD while sitting at the keyboard/mouse and clicking "Next"?


"When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." -- Sony BMG attorney Jennifer Pariser









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