Xbox Live maintenance slated for June 16, could be down all day
Thu Jun 11, 2009 2:46PM EDT
See Comments (26)
Does someone at Microsoft HQ really, really hate me? There I was, all planning to celebrate my 40th birthday next Tuesday (please, no presents) with some fast and furious "Halo 3" deathmatches, and now I hear that Xbox Live—the online gaming and media service for the Xbox 360—will be down for the count that day (and potentially all day) for, like, "maintenance." What gives?
Indeed, Microsoft appears to have learned its lesson after the infamous Xbox Live meltdown of Christmas 2007. Since then, Live (which boasts upwards of 17 million members) has barely skipped a beat, even after the big "New Xbox Experience" overhaul last November. (The same can't be said about Xbox 360 hardware, unfortunately.)
On his blog, Xbox Live's Major Nelson (a.k.a. Larry Hryb, director of programming for Live) writes that the scheduled downtime—slated to begin at 12:01 a.m. PST on the 16th and lasting for "up to 24 hours"—is for "maintenance only," intended primarily to "prepare for some of the recently announced features" on tap for the fall.
Those features, announced during E3 last week in Los Angeles, include goodies such as Facebook and Twitter access, an enhanced Netflix player that will let you browse for new movies, and streaming 1080p videos over Live's upcoming, Zune Marketplace-powered video store.
If the price for all those new features is a day of Live maintenance, well … I guess I'll live. (And besides, at least the maintenance is scheduled for a workday and not over the weekend.)
In any case, consider yourself warned: No Xbox Live next Tuesday. Hey, single-player mode isn't so bad, right?
Related:
Xbox Live Service Maintenance [Xbox Live's Major Nelson]
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26 Posted by pusich@sbcglobal.net on Wed Jun 17, 2009 1:21AM EDT Report Abuse
It shut down last night at 12 midnight PACIFIC time, which is 3 a.m. Eastern, ballplaya. The 24 hours are not up yet. You've got a little under two more hours to wait. As for myself, I'm not going to log on at precisely 3 a.m. like everyone else. Think about it... out of the 17 million Live users, probably half of them are gonna try to connect at 3 a.m. Eastern (12 Pacific) Meaning even if Live is back up and running, it will be about as fast as a turtle in a pan of molasses. Have fun crashing the servers! ;-)