Will Xbox Live Survive 2008 Holiday Stress?

November 3, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 1:38 pm

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This year many gamers will open new consoles for the holidays and many of those same gamers are going bring their console “live” on Xbox Live the same day. Traditionally we’ve found Xbox Live falls under the weight of the holiday rush much like Apple’s iTunes. Will we repeat history again?

Although a fully loaded Xbox Live service is money in the bank, how much money will Microsoft lose when gamers login for the first time to a service in a state of destruction? People say first impressions are extremely important, but Microsoft makes a poor first impression every holiday. Xbox Live’s Jerry Johnson told Eurogamer:

“I can tell you that when Robbie Bach is on the phone on Christmas Day calling people asking what the hell is going on, and that’s coming down from Steve Ballmer… that’s the kind of attention it got last holiday.

Many things have changed since then, and we realised [sic] the kind of growth trajectory we were on and had to prepare for it.” (Kotaku)

It’s obvious the top executives at Microsoft want to give customers a great first impression and, after a few repeated holiday down times, this year is the chance to change it all. By now, Microsoft should be fully aware of the holiday flash crowd and have a system ready to cover the load.

Plenty of gamers login because their console automatically signs in on startup, but a handful of those gameres will be shopping for Xbox Live Arcade games to see what Microsoft is now offering them and their new console. Many XBLA games the current 360 crowd is bored of will be fresh and new to holiday adopters so it’s very important to keep the system online.

Much like Amazon, sales will decrease when the service is busy or under heavy load. Hopefully Microsoft is ready to make a great first impression to new buyers and give them the option to buy high valued (high markup) electronic downloads.

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Beta: Wrath of the Lich King – Initial ReactionBeta: Wrath of the Lich King – Initial Reaction

The long awaited Wrath of the Lich King is here! By long awaited, really, I mean, I waited a long time to get patch after patch of the next expansion to Blizzards best of MMORPG. Although I don’t know the architecture to creating the patches, it seems so dated in methodology. Why must I download 5GB of patches when one can just supply me with an option to pull everything.

The initial download was roughly 1.8GB for what I assume would be “the DVD” you’d be buying in the store. Once I install that baseline it requires another roughly 1.2GB “update” before you can launch the application. Once you launch the WoW executable it must download another 500MB or so of patch data followed by another 100MB of patch data followed by another 500MB of patch data. Then, and only then, can you login and start playing!

My first option was to use the character I transferred over from Scarlet Crusade and jump into the world. Wishfully thinking, I also migrated over my addons to see what would work. After receiving more errors than I can explain I logged out and disabled all the addons. We’ll wait on those.

Within seconds I noticed the date in the top corner, it seems WoW has evolved over the years from a black vortex of time suckage to something a bit more user friendly. An older patch included a clock on the map so you know how many hours you’ve got before the sunrises, allowing you to sneak in a few hours of sleep before work. Now, they’ve included a calendar so you will know just how many days you’ve been up without food or drink. I kid.

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Gaming Podcast Forums: LIVE!Gaming Podcast Forums: LIVE!

Looking for a place to leave podcast feedback and you don’t feel like firing off an e-mail? You can now login/register to gamingpodcast.net and post to our forums! We’ll be building forums for all styles of discussions if people start to use them, it’s an experiment, we’ll see how it goes.

You can chat about topics discussed in the podcast with us and suggest new topics we can speak about on future gaming podcast episodes. We’re also starting our own World of Warcraft podcast guild called Fallen Souls and we’re looking for new members.

We’re looking to open discussions on all genre’s of games, all styles of play and anything else gaming. If you’d like to setup an avatar, you can head over to gravatar.com and build an avatar associated with your login email address and it will appear on the site and in comments.

The American Entertainment Industry is Contributing to Global Piracy!The American Entertainment Industry is Contributing to Global Piracy!

Believe it or not, there are many gamers that live outside the United States. Those of us that do not live in Japan and the US aren’t always a first priority for the entertainment industry when it comes to hot new releases, yet everyone feels the power of the marketing dollar… we’re just not all “privileged” enough to experience it on day one… or year one. Here is one such story, written by rover on of our forum posters, explaining how this leads to piracy in our global economy…

Let us pretend for a moment the best motion picture of the year ranked 10 out of 10 stars on imdb.com and was released in November 18th 2007. While the United States had access to the movie all year, distributors announced a European premiere on June 16th 2008. Months after North American the release, Europe may see this blockbuster movie in its region, leaving everyone to ask themselves, “how do I see this wonderful film now?”

The world isn’t as it once was. Years ago we found ourselves lining up on an early Saturday morning in the freezing rain just to buy a new CD or rent the latest movie on VHS. Today, people expect to get what thy want NOW. We see a spot during a commercial on TV for a new CD, movie or perhaps a TV show which spark our interest and what do we do? We can wait six days to watch the next hit TV show prime time episode or line up at CD MegaWorld Monday morning at 7am to buy the CD, or we do something entirely different: we go online. Most of us would go to amazon.com to find that excellent new artist, or perhaps itunes.com to find the latest episode of our favorite TV show.

Online is the way to go. We don’t mind paying for quality entertainment; the only thing we ask is to get some flexibility to our time schedule. Some of us may watch our hit prime time TV show at 1 AM or listening to our favorite music on the bus at 5 AM. The question is “can I?” and the answer is, “yes you can!”

Now here’s where problems arise. The “yes you can” statement only applies to one group of people, specifically the North Americans. You watched this seasons first episode of “Lost” on TV, you can go online and find out there are three full seasons of 22 episodes already aired. Great! Now all I must do is pay up roughly USD $1 per episode and I’ve got the ability to download all episodes and watch them at my own leisure… right?