Microsoft Disloyal to consumers.

[Shaka]

I found this on the internet earlier, I believe that Microsoft is very disloyal and the way they treat their consumers is very messed up. Read this, tell me what you think.

" 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"

[HylianHitman]

You must be the anti-Xbox or something.

[nofear360]

Not you again ...

The moaner makes some valid points though!

[Rossko_UK]

I can't be arsed to read all that bullshit, but you should really provide a link to the original article. I'd like to see where you got it from so I may be tempted to read it when I'm super bored.

[UKJAY]

Xbox Live is a premium service where you are paying for more than just to look at the dashboard. You're paying to have access to a service where you can play against people and communicate. Logically it'll have problems sometimes and the adverts are mostly only informative xbox360 stuff like what demo and content you can download. Its not as if it's like seeing a perfume ad or supermarket ad on your dashboard.

Read the Microsoft doesn't owe anybody anything link below...

http://news.filefront.com/editorial-...x-live-issues/

[Rabid]

I read this about a week ago... The original guy who wrote it (can't remember the GT) ended up "offline" and the letter was removed from all well known websites.

[Nayse-BTC]

id usually be the one to say yeh, hes right microsoft are rippin people off and we're all dumb. but its about 35 quid or something, you can spend much more than that on a night out- and you get xbox live for a year. Id prefer it to be free but its microsoft we're talkin bout- they wont give you shit unless they want to

[UKJAY]

Originally Posted by Nayse-BTC

id usually be the one to say yeh, hes right microsoft are rippin people off and we're all dumb. but its about 35 quid or something, you can spend much more than that on a night out- and you get xbox live for a year. Id prefer it to be free but its microsoft we're talkin bout- they wont give you shit unless they want to

Talking of which...my new job are having a staff party on Feb 6th. There's a staff party every 6 - 8 weeks

[nofear360]

Originally Posted by UKJAY

Talking of which...my new job are having a staff party on Feb 6th. There's a staff party every 6 - 8 weeks

YAY!! That means only one thing: MORE pics of drunk JAY!!

[Oscar]

2 points here...........

1 - This thread went off-topic quicker than any other in existence... Wooo Hoooo is't a record!!!

2 - Why bother posting someone elses thoughts on a forum and not your own... Oh yeah, you're an illiterate fool with no real opinion worth listening to?

[_Chris_]

Originally Posted by Oscar

2 points here...........

1 - This thread went off-topic quicker than any other in existence... Wooo Hoooo is't a record!!!

2 - Why bother posting someone elses thoughts on a forum and not your own... Oh yeah, you're an illiterate fool with no real opinion worth listening to?

Ohh wold'nt go that far man, i have memroies or threads going off topic in the first reply in the past...

[Oscar]

I guess I just got out of bed on the wrong side this morning?

[_Chris_]

If there was a horse head in with you when you woke up this morning, then yes. Definatly

[Oscar]

No that was just the misus without her makeup on!!...... Thank god she doesn't know I jast said that!!

[badlad1888]

Originally Posted by UKJAY

Xbox Live is a premium service where you are paying for more than just to look at the dashboard. You're paying to have access to a service where you can play against people and communicate. Logically it'll have problems sometimes and the adverts are mostly only informative xbox360 stuff like what demo and content you can download. Its not as if it's like seeing a perfume ad or supermarket ad on your dashboard.

Read the Microsoft doesn't owe anybody anything link below...

http://news.filefront.com/editorial-...x-live-issues/

I forgive them for the trouble over the holiday period. Last night there was over 400,000 people play COD4, given the logistics behind that there are going to be some problems.

[Jamzy No 2]

yeah was it the guitar hero 2 thread that jay told us to ignore the post and he just started talking bout summit else....

im sick of this guy though he never ever responds to what he post and he never sees both sides of the coin and he dosn't even have a xbox live gold account so how can he possibley know shit, he needs to get a life.

[stormz 1]

he spoke briefly about an xbox live diamond service? can someone elaborate on that?

[HylianHitman]

It was just another ill-fated feature that was going to implemented.. somewhere, but it didn't work out. By the way don't respond to this guy, like I said he's the anti-Xbox.

[stormz 1]

lmao @ anti-xbox

[jacobmars]

How come I don't get any type of ads at all?

[nofear360]

Originally Posted by jacobmars

How come I don't get any type of ads at all?

Parental controls maybe?

[jacobmars]

No, I don't have any parental controls enabled.

[Rossko_UK]

Originally Posted by jacobmars

No, I don't have any parental controls enabled.

Wow ask the same question in two threads, nice.

I would seriously check that you definitely don't have any parental controls at all, because that's the only reason, that I can think of at least, as to why you don't receive ads.

Might also depend on what you have your dash and local settings set to. One would assume the US, but you never know...

[jacobmars]

Originally Posted by Rossko_UK

Wow ask the same question in two threads, nice.

I would seriously check that you definitely don't have any parental controls at all, because that's the only reason, that I can think of at least, as to why you don't receive ads.

Might also depend on what you have your dash and local settings set to. One would assume the US, but you never know...

Hey, it's really bugging me and I need answers.

[_Chris_]

Yeah, cause not having ads on your dash is SUCH a bad thing...