A few days ago, Microsoft took the entire Xbox LIVE Service down for around 24 hours to complete scheduled maintenance and perform upgrades. Sounds innocent enough, but for a paid service like LIVE, I'm finding it more and more difficult to accept these scheduled downtimes. Xbox LIVE is no longer a niche service for hardcore gamers to frag each other in HALO 2. Today it's the backbone to an entertainment experience that families, moms, dads, and kids rely on.
Now, I'm a reasonable guy. I understand that systems like LIVE, which are always being pushed to their limit, need maintenance, patches, and expansions. However, Microsoft's approach needs to change; they need to ensure a basic level of service for all their paid customers.
What do they need to do exactly?
1. Tell Users Xbox LIVE is Down for Maintenance on Their Console
I'm not even sure why I have to suggest this. On Tuesday I attempted to connect to the LIVE service, and of course, it failed. My Xbox told me I have a problem with my Internet connection, apparently my router or the gateway has an incorrect MTU setting. I know that's not true, but I did waste 10-15 minutes resetting network extension kits, rebooting my router, rebooting the 360, and various other troubleshooting steps. When nothing worked I finally went to Major Nelson's blog and learned that Live was down for maintenance.
My problem... lot's of people who use LIVE don't religiously read Major Nelson's blog. LIVE customers like me should be told Xbox LIVE is down for maintenance when we attempt to connect to the service through our console, not that we have Internet connection problems. Microsoft shouldn't waste our time suggesting we investigate problems that don't exist.
2. Other Paid Services, Like Netflix, Should Continue to Work
In fact, that was the primary reason I was firing up my 360. Since my first child was born, I get very little opportunity to watch TV, and wanted to kill my free hour watching something from Netflix. Oh that's right, I can't access and stream Netflix content without a connection to LIVE.
For starters, why Microsoft insists on Gold level memberships to access Netflix is beyond me. I can live with it though since I also subscribe for other reasons, but if MS wants money for me to watch content that doesn't even come from them, their service shouldn't stand in the way of me doing so.
3. Content Purchased through Xbox LIVE should always work
Several others in the LIVE community feel this way, as highlighted by this comment from Andrew over at the LIVE Operations blog. "it's pretty ***** when you can't play videos you've downloaded or even xbox arcade titles because the certificate is hosted on the xbox live servers, this is stuff i've paid for and i can't even play it without being online???"
I agree with Andrew. Certificate servers should never be inaccessible. There's simply no excuse to deny users access to previously paid content. Multiplayer experiences are an exception to this rule, but I should never be denied the option to play a paid Xbox LIVE Arcade game or view a video.
There it is... the basic level of service.
Those are my three basic suggestions/expectations I expect Xbox LIVE to fulfill 100% of the time; a 'basic' level of service. The rest of it (friend lists, chat, multiplayer gaming, marketplace, downloads, etc), though inconvenient, is acceptable to have offline for periods of time for upgrades or maintenance... at least in my opinion.
What basic expectations do you have? Post your comments below.
Comments
I totally concur. The line
I totally concur. The line in the sand is drawn when money comes out of your wallet. I understand limitations or outages with free services, but NOT for ones I actually pay for.
Maintenance is always required for any service, paid or unpaid, but they should be scheduled and notices should be sent out as you said. Emergency outages undoubtably happen, but when they do occur, email notifications should be sent so everyone knows it's being worked on.
One of the online file syncing services I use has gone out a few times, unexpectedly, with no email, for hours at a time... and I pay monthly for it. I like the service so much I have no plans to cancel, but it really burns my toast when it happens.
Peter Redmer said:
To give MS credit, they apparently did send out some notices to LIVE inboxes a few days prior to the outage, though since I hadn't signed on to LIVE for more than a week, I missed them. In any event, I should be told LIVE is offline when I try to connect, not that my Internet connection is messed up. I'm sure I'm not the only one that casually uses Xbox LIVE.
Well said on everything else. It's high time MS stepped it up and recognized that LIVE is now for much more than multiplayer gaming. It can't simply "go offline" anymore.