I am not a console gamer, but even I have had enough of the XBL fiasco. I can’t talk to any of my gamer pals, who game on the 360, without some sort of XBL complaint popping up in conversation. “Where does my money even go every month?” and “I won’t even bother to bum money off my mom anymore if I can’t even play” and so on. Not to worry, Microsoft has a great plan to smooth all the ruffled feathers and betrayed wallets.
Find out what Microsoft’s “take this gift and stop asking questions” plan is after the jump!
Starting on Wednesday, January 23, at 2am and running through until the following Sunday (January 27); XBL users will be allowed to download Undertow for free. The game was created by Chair Entertainment Group and would ordinarily cost 800 MS points ($10). For an XBLA game it does not sound so bad with 15 single-player levels and a 16 gamer multi-player setup. Too bad the game has been out for a long time now and tons of people already own it. Word is you may be able to contact MS and get MS credits for your prior purchase though.
For real? Are console gamers THAT easy to bribe? That’s like buying a car, having it break down on you off and on for months and then getting an air freshener for all your troubles. MS is going to give away an arcade game, that costs them next to nothing anyway, free for just 5 days and THAT will make people forgive and forget? MS can’t even offer up a NEW game? Gamers pay monthly fees for one thing: quality online support so they can play their games. A small refund, maybe a free month of gold membership, some free MS points, hell even a Halo doll would be better than just giving away an old XBLA game.
If this actually works, I’ll be shocked. There’s a word for people who get taken advantage of this easily, that word is “SUCKER!” Since I don’t think most gamers are “suckers” I sincerely hope you all don’t let Microsoft off the hook this easily.
Popularity: 1% [?]
i think its resinable cuz we only lost out on about 1p worth of xbl acording to some people who have worked it out so a £5 games is cool
You know, we are lucky we got anything for this. When my cable or my DSL goes out they don’t rush out to order me a free pizza or something.
Most companies would just say “yes we know there is a problem and yes we are working on it”.
I would have rather had MS points but I will gladly take Undertow.
Damn, I’m going to have to start bum’n the Mon$y from my dad now that I can’t play and shouldn’t be beg’n me muther.
Oh, we haven’t forgotten
.
I’m still waiting for the explanation.
The “They’re trying to bribe us” angle seems a little weak. What is MS’s choice here?
A) Do nothing and be accused yelled at for “Where’s my compesnation for down time..”
B) Give gamers something and be accused of bribery.
As a gamer, if both the above are somehow evil, I vote companies do B. At least then we know they have acknowledge the problem and made some attempt (no matter how minor) to appologize.
Wow … and the pile on continues. What you had to say might have been considered legitmate if tons of other people hadn’t already jumped on the popular bandwagon of du jour and gone off on these soapbox rant-bashes already. Does anyone enjoy reading these or even see any sense behind them at this point? I know I don’t. It just feels like trolling for the sake of it now. Don’t like how things have been handled? Man up and be a consumer. Take your money (and therefore support) and put it elsewhere.
‘Oh I’m not even a console gamer, but uh, it still effects me, and I, uh, don’t like it, and uh, I have friends that don’t like it either as proof that it’s just more than my sole opinion.’
If anyone thinks that by going about this proverbial act of complaining – unique to the internet – will get you what you want, when you want it, for free of all things – you’re really out to lunch. Remember the end user agreement when you signed up for XBL? Yeah, that little number. Remember how it mentioned service downtimes? Yeah, okay, but you still signed up anyhow and now when things have gone to the dogs you want guarantees and a free meal of your choosing from MS when neither was offered in the first place.
This tangent is a great example of the human condition and the fact that you can’t please everyone. It didn’t matter how MS handled this – the internet would still have been ablaze with people calling for MS’s head and how they should have really given them xxx amount of free XBL time or a personal choice in the matter of compensation – no matter the technical aspects, time or cost affronted to MS.
if they were to give out a free month of xbl for all the troubles it shouldnt be viewed as bribery, it should be viewed as “doing the right thing.”
im taking the bribe I inever use XBox live that much anyway.
I played halo 3 on xboxlive like last month sometime and not touched it or xbox live since.
so Idon’t care if it’s broke I got other stuff to play online that does work on the PC or even that damn ps3 plays warhawk but i never touch that either.
im taking the bribe I never use XBox live that much anyway – CUBE
I agree , I never use xbox live that much either so in the end I get a free game for nothing. I play for the fun of it . It’s not the end all be all online play for me. I play on the xbox only for the single player and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I don’t need to play a game to hear racist remarks/comments and or to hear swearing nonstop.
There is another option for this.
Keep players in the loop and owe up to the issue by keeping players in the loop as to what exactly went wrong and how they intend to fix it. Then with their half billion dollar income from subscriptions, actually fix it and then give points to the customers equivalent to the time frame of the issues.
No one can argue with that.
@NoneOfYourBusiness
(Unfortinatly for us who want info) 3 guys in the states are attempting to sue microsoft over the outage microsoft has already said thats why they cant talk about it
legally
its good that they game us a game but this will never be forgotten (for like the next three weeks)