Xbox Live "up and running"

By Robert Purchese Published 26 September, 2007

Despite Halo pressure.

Microsoft has made some tweaks to Xbox Live and it should now be up and running.

You can keep an eye on exactly what state the service is in on the official status page, which is updated by the operations center as it irons out various niggles.

Problems came, unsurprisingly, after Halo 3 launched in the US on Tuesday, prompting an enormous surge of Master Chiefs venturing on to the service in order to shoot each other and say rude words.

Halo 3 goes on sale in the UK today, and announced its presence last night with a film-style premiere event at London's enormous IMAX cinema.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (31) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • tesodosbichos #1 5 years ago

    About time. Now I can finally get back to that COD4 beta. Screw you Halo fanboys who crashed the system.

  • Clive_Dunn #2 5 years ago

    I'm glad it was only Xbox live that went down, I was worried that such a dense concentration of tards in one place might rip a hole in the fabric of space and suck us all in.
    Edited by Clive_Dunn at 26/09/07 @ 10:05

  • penhalion #3 5 years ago

    @headbog

    Just look at the state of the stats and game system in Warhawk to see how much 40 quid gets you. Warhawk is a good game and all but, the servers always lie about how many people are playing, can play and what medals you actually got etc. etc. I still get messages about a 32 player game with 15 players being full! I've joined as the sole player on a 32 player server and got a message saying waiting for 7 of 8 players?!! Everything is inconsistent and no two games allow you to join multiplayer in the same way.

    If you compare Live to Sony network you'll see very quickly where your money goes and be glad it does!

  • brooza #4 5 years ago

    I prefer to use http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/support/?WT.sv...

  • kangarootoo #5 5 years ago

    @headbog

    There is no such thing as an online service that never goes down.

  • brooza #6 5 years ago

    But did it ACTUALLY go down?

  • DanWhitehead #7 5 years ago

    I'm certain the Xbox Live Terms of Service categorically don't guarantee a service that "never goes down".

  • LOLLERS #8 5 years ago

    RAWWWR LIVE SUX I ONLY PLAY ONLINE ON PC WHICH NEVER BREAKS AND IS FREE M$ ETC ETC

  • 3william56 #9 5 years ago

    The stats and player numbers issue on Warhawk is a bit of a pain to be sure (generally, just avoid any ranked servers with

  • TruWari3r #10 5 years ago

    I'm pretty sure all silver xbox live users in the United States can benefit from a BestBuy offer for free gold for 25,26 and 27 September, an American promotion combined with the halo 3 release.

    So yeah even more then expected usage perhaps?

  • r0gerr0ger #11 5 years ago

    @penhalion

    Totally agree with this comment. I think WarHawk's really decent, but it's a relief to get back into XBOX live after the network shenanigans on PSN.
    Edited by r0gerr0ger at 26/09/07 @ 10:42

  • t8yman #12 5 years ago

    err, anyone can get live gold for nowt for halo, there is a 48 free gold card with the game.

  • FortysixterUK #13 5 years ago

    To CLIVE DUNN

    YOU'RE a tard !

    ( Blows raspberry whilst wiggling hands near ears )

  • Fab4 #14 5 years ago

    There may not be an online system that never goes down, but there are system administrators, who know in advance that server load will be increasing significantly, who actually do something about it in advance. Because M$ apparently employ a bunch of monkeys to run XBL, this hasnt been the case, and people who pay good money for a service, and have no interest in Halo 3, have to suffer.

  • SD #15 5 years ago

    So you get what you pay for right?

    I remember Warhawk on launchday. It was busy as hell. And PSN stayed up. The servers stayed up.
    60 bucks a year gets you... slow downloadtimes when Stranglehold demo gets released, and a networkcrash when Halo 3 is released. Way to go MS. How long are gamers gonna take this anyway?

  • polar #16 5 years ago

    Eh, I'd imagine that the numbers trying to play Halo3 online far outweighed those trying to connect to PSN when Warhawk was launched. Comparisons between the two don't really hold much water in terms of flying the PSN flag.

  • hula hoops #17 5 years ago

    Ah come on! How can everybody miss the possibility that this is just another advertisement trick from Microsoft that say, "Look! Halo 3 is so popular, it can even bring our reliable LIVE service to its knees". I am not saying that Halo 3 is not actually popular, but the more popular it is the more people will be sucked into it. That's what Microsoft wants ... nuclear chain reaction!

  • ElasticTangent #18 5 years ago

    The problems with Warhawk are all to do with the game and not PSN. Even when the Warhawk servers were down PSN itself was up and running. That's different than Halo 3 launching and killing the whole of Live!

    I agree that Live is 100% better than PSN but I don't think PSN is so bad considering it's totally free.

  • Garulon #19 5 years ago

    @Clive Dunn - are you the Clive Dunn, who played a retarded old person to such great delight as "Grandad" and whatever the hell your "dont panic Mr Mannering" character was called in Dad's Army?

    I bet by now you actually are a retarded old person it's somewhat ironic that the work's dried up to such an extent you can spend all day on XBL. I'll be so disappointed if I don't hear "dont panic Mr Mannering" at least once when shooting someone, calling them a camping jew fag homo and teabagging them :(

  • Fab4 #20 5 years ago

    @Garulon - quit with your racist comments, you sad fucker.

  • M83J01P97 #21 5 years ago

    "I remember Warhawk on launchday. It was busy as hell. And PSN stayed up. The servers stayed up.
    60 bucks a year gets you... slow downloadtimes when Stranglehold demo gets released, and a networkcrash when Halo 3 is released. Way to go MS. How long are gamers gonna take this anyway?"

    Wow... you do realise the number of X Box Live users with Halo 3 vastly out numbers PS3 owners right? When Sony actually manages to sell the same amount of PS3's as 360's have sold and then get a game as popular as Halo 3 out there, I would like to see them not suffer a few problems with their live service.

    I'm not normally one to enter into the whole silly console war debate but at this point in time, you can't compare PS3's network to X Box live. One has millions of users, one doesn't.

    Edit: oh and Live didn't go down... it simply suffered a lot of lag which resulted in people being disconnected. That's not the same as a service actually going down.
    Edited by M83J01P97 at 26/09/07 @ 12:23

  • asphaltcowboy #22 5 years ago

    Corr! It's like actually being in the game...

  • HoriZon #23 5 years ago

    It was down for me to but now seems to be up but my Market Place wont load any of the graphics bar the adverts ?

  • The-Bodybuilder #24 5 years ago

    >"I remember Warhawk on launchday. It was busy as hell. And PSN stayed up. The servers stayed up."£

    Yes, because warhawk has as many players as halo, right?

  • BBIAJ #25 5 years ago

    We still don't have the free Halo 3 pic and theme that should have gone up at midnight though, I nicked mine off of the American Marketplace instead...

  • Garulon #26 5 years ago

    @Fab4

    [link url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire
    ]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satire
    [/link]

    There ya go. Hope this helps!

  • lennon #27 5 years ago

    According to Bungie 1.2 million people have played Halo 3 (preumably while connected to xbox live) in the last 24 hours.

    /Is impressed

  • agparrot #28 5 years ago

    @tesodosbichos About time. Now I can finally get back to that COD4 beta. Screw you Halo fanboys who crashed the system.

    Yeah sort of agree - I thought there was just nobody else on there last night because they were all playing Halo... I wonder if Activision will extend the beta by an extra day to make up for lost playtime?

    I should imagine if you signed up for 48 hours of Live to play Halo3, you'd be disappointed if it didn't work for a chunk of that, wouldn't you?

  • Metalfish #29 5 years ago

    When I was there earlier it told me there were around 300 people on. That's hardly enough to strain live for now, surely?

  • kungphu #30 5 years ago

    Didn't think Live had a chance with all the halo fan boys. I struggled to download the pro evo demo the other night with a 16 meg connection. I would imagine the demand for halo would be grater than the pro evo demand

  • tesodosbichos #31 5 years ago

    @agparrot and everyone else

    Many apologies for the opening post, as I just joined the fanboys. I feel all dirty...