The 360 - Online, Japan, HD-DVD 66
Lots of tidbits about Microsoft's next-gen console floating around this week. On Monday, the company revealed that almost 60% of 360 owners are now using Xbox Live. GameDaily discusses what is making their setup so dang popular. Major Nelson's Sunday podcast included a lot of details on the 360's approach to HD-DVD. HD Beat has the rundown on what was said, including the inevitable Sony smack-talk. Finally, Gamasutra has a feature on the 360's position in Japan. A group of analysts debate whether or not the system even needs Japan in order to be a success. From this last article: "I don't think that American gamers are enamored [with] Japanese product because it comes from Japan; rather, I think Americans like good games, regardless of the country of origin. Microsoft doesn't need Japanese development to succeed in the U.S.; it needs good games, period."
Good games. Hell yeah! (Score:4, Interesting)
Breakdown, please (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree... doesn't *everyone* have Silver by default? This just means that 60% of 360 owners have it hooked up to the internet, right? I wouldn't mind knowing how many are putting down money for it. Either way, Gold is a good bargain if you want to play online. MS just needs more Co-op / MP games worth the $5/month.
If you agree use "zonked" tag (Score:5, Interesting)
On this story, my main beef would be the HD-DVD link doesn't really talk about the 360 HD-DVD support at all, it's just general information about the HD-DVD format.
Re:Breakdown, please (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm on the other side of the spectrum. I have a Gold account, and my significant other has a Gold account too. I also have 2 Silver accounts registered as Europe and Japan so I can access the marketplace content from those countries AND I have 4 or so other Silver accounts that were made by some of my friends who frequently come over to play the console despite not owning one themselves. So on my console alone I have 8 Xbox Live accounts... I know quite a few other people who've made multiple Silver accounts for accessing other marketplace content or for friends to use etc.
So the real question is: does that 60% represent the percent of consoles that have one or more accounts on it, or does that 60% represent the total number of accounts over the total number of consoles?
The analyst article is worthless (Score:5, Interesting)
My Bad Experience with XBox Live (Score:2, Interesting)
I picked up a xbox360 shortly after launch, of which I was excited about the aspects of XBox Live. I signed up for the free 30 day trial, which converted into a full account after the 30 days if it's not canceled.
I plugged in my credit card and my xbox live gold account was activated. About 2 months later I started getting errors on my login when I would turn on my xbox360. I remembered my wife having lost her debit card, the bank re-issued new cards to us and that the information on the card was changed and I need to go back and re-activate my account with my new card. I tried through the xbox360 interface and kept getting an error message, but I was told by a friend that I would probably need to just do it from online.
So I went to xbox-live and signed in, and added in my new credit card and immediately (without asking), I was charged $15 for 2 months of service that was missed (Fair enough), my balance was $0 though and I still couldn't login to my xbox-live account. If I used a service, I don't have a problem paying for it. This wasn't Microsoft's fault my debit card was reported stolen.
It took a lot of searching, but eventually I found the 800 number and called customer service. I was promptly in touch with a live person after a few menu choices, with almost no wait. Now at this point, I was starting to get a little annoyed as the whole thing seemed like a strange run-around for what I would perceive as a common problem. The person on the phone immediately told me that my account was cancelled due to non-payment, and even after explaining the situation he told me that though my account is in good standing that they where not able to re-activate my account and if I wanted to have an xbox-live account I would need to create a brand new account. I had started to get frustrated at the situation and articulated to the customer service rep how I felt about the policy of perma-locking an account after a default on payment. Despite the non-malitious nature of the situation, I was shocked that they would refuse to re-activate the account. The person on the phone kept repeating "Sir, you have to see this from Microsofts point of view.. you missed 2 paymenhts", which only upset me more.
This was INCREDIBLY frustrating as anyone who has a xbox-live account would understand that there is a potentially large time investment and how frustrating this situation would be. I have many friends that have my old xbox live account added, all my 'accomplishments and gamerpoints' (the way xbox tracks your success as a gamer) would be gone. It would be similar to having a World of Warcraft account that after a lapsed payment is locked or deleted, never letting you back in unless you bought a new account and gave up all your progress in the game.
After this experience, I refuse to pay for xbox-gold membership (Silver is free, and this would of never happened had I started with a silver membership). And I would STRONGLY warn anyone who is considering either upgrading to a gold account, or buying a new xbox 360 and getting a new xbox live account to consider that it's very possible and likely that you will have your account locked and be forced to start over with a new xbox membership.
BUYER BEWARE