Xbox Live Operations Blog

Did you know you don’t have to call support to get help?

2009-09-29T23:33:00Z

The Solutions channel is In-dash, and Xbox LIVE is now on Twitter and Facebook!

Hey there Xbox fans, I’m DJ (aka Shreddy), and it’s about time I chimed in. Don’t want to have to call the call center to get support? Well, for most things you don’t have to… In addition to being able to get help via the articles and forums on http://Xbox.com/support, there are a few new ways for you to connect with us and get the help you need.

Solutions Channel: Helpful information on a number of topics is available right in the dash. Just go to My Xbox, then scroll right to the second to last slot, and you’ll find Solutions.

Twitter: Tweet much? If you have support related questions, you can tweet to @XboxSupport and we’ll do our best to help you, or point you to the best place to get help. Check it out… you can follow us at http://Twitter.com/Xboxsupport. Over 2700 of you already are!

Facebook: Have you become a fan of the Xbox 360 group? It has over half a million fans and is a great way to connect with other enthusiasts! If you’re looking for help or just looking for other fans to play online with, join the very active discussion on the Wall. We’ve also recently added a Support tab to provide information on all the ways you can get the help you need.

It’s our job to represent all of you, so don’t hesitate to let us know what you think about the service – what are you excited about, causes you pain, want to see changed?

Cheers,

Shreddy

It’s Dashboard Update time!

2009-08-11T03:11:00Z

For those of you who signed up for the Public Preview, you’re already running the latest and greatest version of the Dashboard. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the early access, and we’d like to thank you for all the great feedback in the Preview forums on Xbox.com. Starting tomorrow morning at 2AM Pacific we’ll be rolling it out to all Xbox LIVE users worldwide.

This update has a ton of new functionality – Xbox 360 Games on Demand, Avatar Props and Avatar Marketplace, User Ratings, improved experiences for Parties, Netflix, the Guide, and more! There’s a fairly comprehensive list of what’s new available at Xbox.com.

Enjoy!

(and if you haven’t checked out Splosion Man yet, I highly recommend it! bort bort bort!)

What we’ve been up to lately?

2009-07-23T21:50:00Z

It’s been a pretty crazy couple of months around here. I’ll try not to repeat that too often, as I think I’ve been saying that since I joined Xbox back in 2001. If working in a whirlwind sounds appealing, this is the place you want to be. Of course, the Madden 10 demo released on Xbox Live this morning so it’s true all over again!

A little over a month ago we made some major upgrades to the datacenters that drive Xbox Live. We did a number of different things – some of which I can’t talk about – but it’s been made very clear that there’s interest in what we did, so here’s a few tidbits:

Capacity Upgrades. There’s more than 20 million of you on Xbox Live now, and we need to be prepared for when everyone wants to play the latest and greatest. With killer titles like Halo: ODST and Modern Warfare 2 shipping this fall we know that you’re all going to be online, and probably all at once!

Deploying New/Improved Features. In order to enable the cool new functionality that’s coming – Xbox 360 Games on Demand, Avatar Marketplace, User Ratings, and a lot more to say nothing of speeding up the Guide and Account Recovery – we had to do a lot of heavy lifting. In some cases that’s updating existing bits, but it also meant new services and new hardware.

Adopting New Technology. Why should you care about this? As a customer, you don’t have to – but I know that a number of you are interested so I’m mentioning it. We’ve completed our migration to 64-bit Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008. This is a platform that delivers some significant advantages for us, which will help us better serve you.

The across-the-board move to 64-bit alone is a big win. Keeping capacity ahead of demand is a never-ending battle, and easy access to many gigabytes of memory is a blessing when you’re trying to scale. Windows 2008 means IIS 7, Hyper-V, and a whole host of performance improvements under the hood. SQL 2008 delivers all sorts of geeky goodness, but I’ll point specifically at the major performance improvements in replication as a wonderful thing.

Starting with the upcoming Public Preview for the next Xbox Live Update you’ll be enjoying the benefits of this work. There’s still a little time left before we stop taking sign-ups, so if you’re interested in getting access ahead of your 20 million closest friends, click this link!

Intermittent errors in Marketplace

2009-07-02T01:14:00Z

We’re aware of intermittent errors in Marketplace that are affecting Xbox Live, Xbox.com, and Games for Windows. You may run into one of a few different status codes including 80004004, 807B01F4, and 8015000a. It may also show that you haven’t purchased content that you have – don’t worry, we haven’t lost your purchase even though it may appear so.

This can occur whether you’re searching Marketplace from the Dashboard or from within a game.

There’s a team of people actively working on the issue. Our apologies for the hassle - we’ll get this resolved as soon as we can.

Seeing status code 80153065 when trying to access Marketplace?

2009-07-02T00:30:00Z

If you have a child account on Xbox Live and you’re from New Zealand you’re probably wondering what’s going on. This isn’t an error - it’s Xbox Live trying to tell you that we can’t allow your account to download from Marketplace. See here for more information.

If your account isn't a child account from New Zealand this doesn’t affect you.

Answering a few FAQs

2009-06-18T22:54:00Z

It’s good to see millions of you online again! The vast majority of folks are happily gaming once again, but we’re not done yet. Here’s an update on a few of the topics that people have been asking about via the blog/email/twitter.

The case of the missing content:

The missing content has been found! The Sega XBLA titles, Burnout: Paradise Big Surf Island, the latest Rock Band content, and the rest are now available. Enjoy!

The Optional Media Update:

A number of people have asked about this. It’s working now – I just verified it myself - but there is a special restriction around it that can be confusing. You can only download the OMU on a single console per gamertag. If you need to download on another console – for instance, if you have two 360s – you’ll need to use a different account on each console. If you don’t have a second account you can create a new Silver account and that’ll work fine.

Slowness and/or timeouts with http://support.xbox.com:

Some people are having no problems with the site while it’s not working for others. This is one of our top priorities right now and we’ll get it resolved ASAP.

The Forza 2 Auction House isn’t working:

We’re aware of this and are currently working with the folks at Turn 10 on it. We’ll get it resolved as soon as we can.

EDIT @ 5:20PM

Comparing Games on Xbox.com:

There have been a number of questions around viewing the achievements of friends on Xbox.com. When you view someone's profile you'll now see a link for "Compare Games".

There have been a lot of requests for more details about what we did on Tuesday. Look for a post from me in the next few days on the subject.

Ok, just one more....

2009-06-18T09:23:00Z

Since a lot of folks have asked.... We are in the process of reloading around 150 pieces of content - this includes the Sega arcade games, Rockband DLC, etc. Because of how our caching works and replication out to CDNs, this could take somewhere between 1 and 4 hours to appear in your specific location. We realize this is not optimal and are working on making this process far more robust. The content for Ghostbusters has been reloaded, however we are still having a problem with token redemption (codes) that I wouldn't reasonably expect will be resolved until morning.

11pm Pacific Update

2009-06-18T08:53:00Z

Most of the new content has been coming up - will get completed this evening. Have gotten a lot of feedback from folks who have both been able to download the new arcade content as well as seeing some of the new content they were waiting for appearing.

Not tracking any big issues, so e, Shreddy and I are gonna call it a night. Folks will still be working around the clock, and they are reading the blog, so if you have any other issues/concerns, please post.

If anything else newsworthy occurs, we will post something in the morning. Hopefully everyone is having fun playing the new games :)

Issue Update - 8:20pm Pacific

2009-06-18T06:16:00Z

Got over the immediate marketplace hurdle, and now the issue with the latest arcade titles downloading is resolved.

We still have some newer content we need to get re-added to get it up there, and we are still having issues with the 1 vs. 100 download.

Updates to follow.

Issues Update - 6:45pm Pacific

2009-06-18T03:58:00Z

Here is what we are tracking and status:

Marketplace issues - the issue is understood, however the resolution is complicated. While I have seen some great suggestions in the blog about how to quickly resolve this, we are having to do this in a rather time intensive way. I know I am taking a big risk in this crowd by suggesting an ETA, but we are reasonably confident we will have this working within about 2 hours, so by 8:45pm Pacific.
Double Purchase - the poor experience related to attempts to re-download these new pieces of content is resolved. Once issue 1 is fixed, when you attempt to download again, it should show the item as purchased and the option to download again.
Achievements comparison between friends on xbox.com - this issue is understood and a fix will be going in tomorrow.

Will send an update when #1 is resolved. Thanks again for all the updates/feedback.

Marketplace Issues Update

2009-06-18T01:09:00Z

As e stated, we are tracking and in the process of resolving an interesting issue around Marketplace. As a part of the work we did yesterday, there were some updates to the tools we use to load content onto the service, and there are some unexpected failures with those new tools that affect new content added to the service in the previous 12-24 hours leading up to the downtime. That is the only issue of significance we are tracking at this time.

The feedback around issues on this forum has really helped – please keep the feedback coming.

When the issue is resolved with the new pieces of content, and you are attempting to re-download, please be advised if it appears that you are being charged again, you aren’t. You can click straight through the messages without being charged. We have stepped through this ourselves, we know the experience is poor, and are working to see what we can do about it.

For those who offered critical feedback on our performance yesterday, and the fact that this marketplace content issue got by us, I understand and appreciate what you are saying. Its our job to be flawless, and we clearly didn’t meet the bar yesterday. I am incredibly proud of the teams for the work that was done, and how hard folks worked to get us where they did – I also appreciate that we work on a service with a demanding customer base; it is as it should be. I love that part of it. Please have faith that we are trying really really hard, and are making improvements as fast as we can.

If you are having any other issues, please post. Thanks again.

Stomping out issues one by one

2009-06-17T22:51:00Z

The graveyard shift has been investigating and triaging issues all night – thanks for your reports! We’re working our way though the list and resolving them as quickly as we can.

I want to let you know that we are absolutely aware of the Marketplace issues that people are reporting and that’s at the top of our list. If you’re not aware, we have a Support page that we keep updated when we run into issues.

If you’re looking to download today’s XBLA releases (M: TG, Sam & Max, and Rocket Riot), Big Surf Island, or other recent pieces of content hang in there. I’ll let you know as soon as we have those problems resolved.

Thank you, and goodnight!

2009-06-17T13:16:00Z

Its 3:16am here in Redmond... things are looking really good. Appreciate the feedback that has been sent - we have gone through all issues that were reported and validated fixes for any issues remaining. e just snuck outta here, Shreddy is still barkin' on the conference bridge, and I am thinking its time for me to get a quick nap. There will be folks monitoring the blog overnight, so again - any issues, please don't hesitate to post.

Thanks for your patience today, and here's to upcoming goodness!

Mulling through a couple of issues

2009-06-17T11:26:00Z

We did hear of a couple of issues after turning things back on, not the least of which were issues with Bungie/Halo 3. We did experience some network issues between our service and Bungie, which are now resolved. If you are experiencing any other issues, please post, as we are on the lookout. Thanks in advance.

Rolling to a stop, kissing the ground

2009-06-17T09:56:00Z

Its on! Game on!