Microsoft Apologizes for Issues, Extends Halo 3 Beta

Yesterday, despite assurances that Crackdown owners would be able to participate in the Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta, Xbox 360 users were tied up in knots by unknown technical issues. Though a fix was eventually released, Microsoft is now apologizing for their mistake. They have extended the Beta period to June 10th to compensate the folks who may have taken off of work to play, and for general annoyance. "It's been a long day for a lot of people but we're happy to announce that effective immediately, a title update for Crackdown is available on Xbox Live that will fix the issue that previously prevented you from downloading the beta. The Microsoft team just deployed this fix and when you launch Crackdown you should receive a prompt to download the update. Please note that it could take up to four hours for your console to receive this update based on various factors. However, the good news is that we're in the clear and Halo 3 gameplay is just over the horizon."

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Can't talk

[MMaestro]

Playing Halo 3 beta.

The real news

[RendonWI]

The real news here is that microsoft admitted to a mistake, AND fixed it in short order. Wish they would do the same for operating systems.

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[Cap'nPedro]

You don't have to buy Halo, but you're pretty much forced into buying their OS. It's best for them to keep people happy about Halo.

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[u-bend]

Yes. That's truly interesting. Perhaps they feel more is at stake in the gaming market, whereas with OS problems, other than those (let's face it, relatively few) of us willing or committed to trying/using other platforms, maybe they don't feel as threatened. Of course threatening patent violations does seem like the behavior of a threatened creature. The other reality here is that in big M$-sized corporations, the business units behave drastically differently, so, for example Sony Music is more likely to b

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[rblancarte]

Their operating systems were a mistake?

RonB

Being able to try it was a pleasant surprise,but..

[RyanFenton]

I recently purchased a used copy of Crackdown along with other used titles for my first purchases for my Xbox360. The guy at the store warned I wouldn't be able to play Halo with it, but I honestly didn't care.

But, after setting up my home network, I found I could download the beta, so, pleasantly surprised, I tried it out.

I was able to listen to folks shout at eachother over their headsets, then join a game, and run around and shoot other Spartan soldiers. I'd say it was OK, but mostly revolved around people popping out enough to expose themselves to a little firepower, then either dying or falling back to recharge shields. I was disappointed by the firepower of the weapons, compared to the cheapness of either walking through a hailstorm of bullets to melee someone, or just hitting people while they were already engaged. The weapons and even grenades just didn't seem a good trade of deaths per kill compared to the reliability of the pure melee approach.

It was nice to try, but I think I'll stick to single player. My philosophy is that when I play games, I want to fully play games and experience a created world. When I want to interact with other people, I'd rather just have a fully engaged conversation - playing a glorified version of rock-paper-scissors rather than really talking to someone has always been disappointing for me. Though playing coop with another person may be cool - I just feel stagnation whenever playing these "kill eachother and start over, and start over, and start over" games, no matter how subtle the interactions.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Being able to try it was a pleasant surprise,bu

[MorpheousMarty]

You are going to get a lot of replies, so I thought I would start by saying, good for you. You know what you want and play to enjoy. I don't dig console FPS, but I like they are there. To the inevitable fanboys who will flame you: he doesn't like the game. He doesn't think that the game makes you stupid or that the people who make them are evil, he just doesn't like it. To Ryan, what games do you like?

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[RyanFenton]

>To Ryan, what games do you like?

I tend to like a little bit of everything - but the real incentive to get a 360 were the Bioware and other RPGs coming out later. That's not to say I don't like FPSs - I've even gone so far as to do some Unreal modding and dabbled with the classic OpenGL tutorials with FPS stuff in them. I also highly enjoy FPS speedruns and other tricks.

The problem with console FPSs isn't that I don't understand the subtleties of them - I very much appreciate what makes them compelling

Re:Being able to try it was a pleasant surprise,bu

[Blahbooboo3]

I find that single player games just can't provide an AI experience compared to playing against real humans. It's annoying that I can tell once I cross a certain threshold/doorway in the game, all of a sudden I get attacked. Then when I back up, the attack stops. The WORST of this was Call of Duty 2. WoW! I remember so vividly in the first 10 minutes of the game (I removed it at 15 minuted) I would move forward 1 inch, and the guns all fired at me, I backed up 1 inch and they stopped!

until AI is truely A

Re:Being able to try it was a pleasant surprise,bu

[gad_zuki!]

I'm glad you know what you like. To me these one-player shooter games are not much fun. The AI is terrible and will never compare to the skills of a real human opponent, not to mention the thrill of fragging a real human player. This is why I love BF2 so much.

I do understand the complaints about these very short deathmatch games. There's no strategy in these "everyone run out and shoot" games where the round is over in 2 minutes. Then again, there's almost no strategy in halo. Its just a fun dumb shoot

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[@madeus]

In fairness to Halo, it's a bit hard to take that critisim seriously, as Halo 2's enduring popularity has entirely been down to it's multiplayer compontent, not it's single player campaign - and the multiplayer aspect of Halo 3 is what a lot of people are looking forward to, more so than the single player (which incidentally has some of the best in game AI ever). The AI in Halo is not terrible by any description and it's a lot smarter than most Battlefield players I play against or with. And you can quote m

Stay home from work?

[tulmad]

People actually stayed home from work so they could be the first people to try Halo 3? Seriously?

Re:Stay home from work?

[rblancarte]

Of course not. These were the same people who lined up weeks in advance for Episodes 1-3 at the theaters. They don't have jobs.

RonB

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[KrazeeEyezKilla]

are you sure you're supposed to be reading slashdot?

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[hansamurai]

A friend of mine at work stayed home yesterday. He was pretty upset about it being delayed and his download arrived at quarter to 12 last night. By that time he was too tired to play and is now at work, probably reading about Halo.

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[toleraen]

What's exactly wrong with taking a day off work to play Halo 3?

There's nothing wrong with take off a day to play a video game. The problem is people that take a day off work on release day for a game that's distributed online. Any MMOG vet will tell you, don't even bother trying to play the first few days (weeks) of release! Games that require an online component hardly ever work right away. Wait until you see the 3rd emergency patch which usually comes after the 7th server crash...then take a few days

Knew it.

[Kelbear]

http://www.digg.com/xbox_360/Halo_3_Beta_Begins_Bu t_Not_For_Crackdown_Owners_Yet#c6717428 [digg.com]

People were freaking out about a 1 day delay. I knew they'd just extend the beta 1 day.

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[twistedsymphony]

they expanded the beta 4 days to make up for the 15 hour delay

What mistake?

[Crasty]

There was no mistake, there was a glitch, and nobody had any right to complain about it, as the Halo 3 beta is a BETA. It is not a free preview. Part of the beta process is hammering out bugs. I think Microsoft is foolish to extend the beta to appease people. In doing so, they are admitting that it is actually a free preview. I'm sure they need to test for server stress, but come on.. What right does anyone have to bitch about a product that is incomplete and they have agreed to test for free?

This is precisely why most companies have you fill out a questionaire before you can participate in a beta. So they can weed out the people that just want to take a look at the game before it's released.

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[EdwinBoyd]

Well because it wasn't exactly free. While Crackdown was a great game there were many people that purchased it primarily to gain access to the Halo 3 Beta.

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[Crasty]

That doesn't make it any less of a beta. Those people need to realize what a beta is. I'm not saying Microsoft was right to basically make beta access a bonus, but if you buy a video card and the free game that came with it sucks, you generally don't storm the internet with posts about how wronged you were to have received a shoddy free product. And in this case, MS just had to work some bugs out, which is typical with betas.

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[@madeus]

No, it's not that it had issues, it's that some people didn't get it at all, and they are quite right to complain. In this case, the Halo 3 "Beta" wasn't really a "Beta" in a technical sense, it's a promotional demo - a marketing exercise as much as anything.

Users have always loved the idea they are getting "omg exlusive leet beta!" releases of hot new software though - that's been the case for years - and so game companies have learned to take advantage of this by labelling regular demo's "public betas" a

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[Babbster]

To my mind, you only get to use that excuse if Microsoft had linked the beta to a bad game. Given that the consensus is that Crackdown is a good game, people lost their right to complain about being "forced" to buy it to get an early look at Halo 3.

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[Crasty]

You make it sound like they are indentured servants to Microsoft and deserve to be thrown a bone. These are people that are getting the opportunity to have a first look at what is likely the most anticipated game of the year. I'm not going to feel sorry for them. I'm willing to bet the majority aren't interested in testing anything. They want to 'play' Halo 3.

Granted, MS brought the attitude on themselves by the promoting they did, but people still aren't owed anything by MS, even if they did buy Crac

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[@madeus]

Granted, MS brought the attitude on themselves by the promoting they did, but people still aren't owed anything by MS, even if they did buy Crackdown.

Wrong. If they purchased a copy of Crackdown on it which specifically included early access to Halo 3, then they are entitled to exactly that.

I guess it just boils down to people being spoiled. I don't know where people get their air of entitlement from, but they certainly have it.

People bought Crackdown and access to the Halo 3 Public Beta was included in the purchase of that product. It would have been illegal for Microsoft to recind this offer after purchase without offering some form compensation and/or a full refund (which depends specifically on the consumer rights laws in your state/country).

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[Crasty]

The fact of the matter is, Microsoft wasn't trying to hose anybody. They had technical issues which is what a beta is all about. Maybe they should have had a pre-beta beta to make sure all beta users could rely on the beta since it was pre-beta beta'ed?

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[@madeus]

No one is disuputing it was an unforseen technical glitch which caused a short delay in release (that most can agree was ultimately was no big deal - and few people actually got uptight about it), it's only a 3 level multiplayer-only demo after all). That doesn't lessen users entitlement to the bundle as it was sold, which is a different argument.

Public beta's go through a Q&A process, especially when they are high profile marketing exercises, like this one. There are 'pre-betas', on a product like this

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[Crasty]

You're right. But the people freaking out about it still sound like tools. :)

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[@madeus]

Oh for sure! :-)

I mean, I like it, but it's only a 3 level demo (and not very large levels at that) - a couple of evenings was more than enough to explore them fully.

Granted it's just a limited early preview, but it's a bit disappointing to see it only looks like an updated version of Halo 2 - in that there is nothing to indiate it's going to live up to the origional promise of Halo (when it was slated for Mac/PC) with big, outdoor maps. I still hope we get to see those big, 32 / 64 player maps that have be

No mistake, but still a nice gesture

[nobodyman]

My *only* beef with this Microsoft is that they were very specific about when this thing was going to be released: May 16 @ 5am PST. In retrospect, they would have had virtually no ill-will if they had just said "We'll try to launch between may 16-18" and leave it at that. That said, I do think people are blowing this **way** out of proportion.

I think Microsoft is foolish to extend the beta to appease people. In doing so, they are admitting that it is actually a free preview

Not necessarily. I mean,

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[aztektum]

The fanboys who bought Crackdown SOLELY for the Halo 3 beta access. However... that's not a demographic I'd really want to pander to.

Who says people are testing the game for FREE?

[gd23ka]

You're forgetting that Microsoft offered exchanging game play experience for
the opportunity to monitor how the game performs. Thousands of people
had accepted the offer and were fully prepared to start testing the game, yet Microsoft did not supply the game in a timely manner.

Never mind the legal angle which may be there or not, four days of extended
play time are in my eyes not enough to make up for the disappointment and
anguish caused to the community.

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[Das Modell]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the problem was not with the beta itself, but with Crackdown owners being unable to even download it, like they were supposed to? That's not the same thing as having a bug in the beta.

Are you just criticizing Microsoft because it's Microsoft? If Microsoft had not extended the beta or fixed the bug, would you have complained about that instead?

Taken off work?

[Sentry21]

Sorry, do people actually do this? I have a hard enough time justifying taking time off work for anything less than medical issues, and people are taking time off work to play a *video game*? That's even more sad and pathetic than people who take off work to go see the latest Star Wars, LOTR, or Harry Potter. No wonder the US is going to hell. :/

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[xXBondsXx]

WOW! How do you go from people taking time off of work to do something the enjoy to the utter economic, political, and moral downfall of America? Look plenty of other countries (France, the UK, etc) are doing MUCH better than Americans are and they work LESS. Enjoying something that you do should not be basis for criticism.