By almost all accounts Xbox Live is a success, acquiring millions of subscribers and introducing new content and revenue streams almost constantly. As a subscriber, the amount and quality of offerings has been, with some exceptions, impressive. From game demos to Xbox Live Arcade titles to the newly introduced Video Marketplace, there’s plenty of content to find and enjoy.
All is not perfect, though. Well I should clarify that by saying all is not perfect for those who have to replace their consoles. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Xbox 360s are not the most reliable pieces of hardware — spurring Microsoft to increase the warranty period to a year recently — so quite a few people are finding themselves with replacements. Microsoft kindly provides a gamertag recovery feature that works as advertised, transferring some important gamertag information back to your new console. You lose game saves, but your Xbox Live experience is almost the same.
Almost.
The only place where things aren’t as rosy is Xbox Live marketplace purchases. Arcade games, video content, additional game content and the like. You see, when you first plop down your points for that content it gets downloaded and authorized for play on the console to which you downloaded it. Anyone on that console can use the content. Also, your Xbox Live profile is authorized to use the content anywhere as long as it’s logged in to Xbox Live. You see where I’m going.
The catch
If you have to replace your 360 — as I did back in July when my launch 360 died — you are suddenly stuck with less functionality. I didn’t discover it until I decided to bring the console to work the day before the holidays for the folks here to have fun with on the projector. After some scintillating rounds of Gears of War I decided to show off some Geometry Wars. “Play Trial Version” showed up on the launch menu. Huh? I bought that on day one! Having never really had the 360 offline I decided to log in. Suddenly I could play. Hmm. So, as long as I’m logged in to Xbox Live with my profile I’m okay. But if my wife wants to play (hahahahahahaha), no go.
Microsoft is handling this piecemeal. There are accounts of people calling 1-800-4MYXBOX and getting points replaced. This is a hack fix as you essentially create a throw-away Xbox Live silver account and redownload the content you bought. More interesting, Microsoft is playing it a bit coy with the support forums. There’s a thread — a 31 page thread to be exact — that was started in the general support forum discussing this problem. It has now been moved to the (significantly lower trafficked) Wish List forum. Lower visibility and all.
I love everything about Xbox Live. This is a minor annoyance, but it yet again points to the inherent weakness in any DRM scheme. At some point, through perhaps unforeseen circumstances, the consumer gets screwed. I bought those games. If you want to get technical, I bought licenses to play those games. Were I not able to connect to the Internet I would have been unable to use my purchased content due to a protection choice. This needs to be corrected in the same way that the original 90-day warranty needed to be corrected.
Here’s more discussion of the licensing from the actual Xbox team.
UPDATE: I just got off the phone with Allison at Xbox Live support. Very friendly and helpful. It is as I feared. Here are the steps you’ll need to go through if you had your 360 replaced by anyone other than Microsoft. If it was done by Microsoft you should just have to call support and tell them you can’t play your premium content on your new console unless you’re logged in.
- Call support and get a reference.
- Go and track down the documentation saying you exchanged your 360 from the reseller where you exchanged the 360. This could be fun.
- Fax the documentation and your contact information and your reference number to Xbox support.
- Call them and get your points.
Far from ideal, but given that people will attempt to game the system any way they can I don’t know that they have too many options. With a July replacement date, I seriously doubt EB is going to have my “replacement documentation.” Lovely.
