Technician Online

January 7th, 2008

Microsoft apologizes to Xbox users… again

It seems Microsoft is starting to get the hang of crawling back to its loyal following of Xbox 360 gamers on bended knee.

After the company announced this summer that it would triple its warranty on the next-generation gaming system over it’s general hardware failures, Microsoft said Thursday it would offer a free game download because of the Xbox Live problems over the holidays.

Since the holiday rush, Live users have had issues getting good performance out of the service for about two weeks. Xbox Live hasn’t gone down altogether per se, but the service can best be described as irregular.

In a message to Live members, the general manager of the service said every member would be able to download a free Xbox Live arcade game. The company will release more details in the coming weeks. He also noted that the holiday season broke the record for the largest sign-up of new members.

There’s no word yet on how much the move will cost the company, but since the service boasted eight million members worldwide before the holidays, and with games costing around $10 a pop, it may be quite a bit. The warranty extension, which fully covers gamers victimized by the infamous “Red Ring of Death,” will cost Microsoft about $1 billion.

Of course, we’re talking Microsoft here.

The bribe may placate many angry Live gamers who have undoubtedly been bored out of their minds with no Halo 3 to play, but with so many other fish in the sea of next-generation consoles, even some of the more forgiving users may soon find someone who appreciates them more than Microsoft.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 9:18 am and is filed under Science & Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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