Xbox Live was down for many people across the entire world this past weekend, and naturally this caused a great deal of speculation regarding what the cause was. Microsoft has since made a formal statement to clarify the downtime was due to an error during regular maintenance, and was not the result of any hacking or deliberate attack.
While this is in some ways reassuring, as a hack would obviously raise questions of what other effects or services the hacking attempt may have breached, it also further emphasizes the current debate regarding always-online requirements for hypothetical Microsoft consoles.
A maintenance error taking down Xbox Live was a huge deal to a lot of people, but those same people were still at least able to play their single-player content (albeit without their DLC in most cases). If the more zealous rumors about the nextbox are true, that maintenance error would have meant a complete shut-down of all effected consoles for the duration of the problem.
The plus side, I suppose, is the irony of the situation. I can only imagine the facepalming Microsoft went through when they realized they were going to have to admit their Live service went down due to a maintenance error with the current always-online debate.
Published: Apr 16, 2013 01:25 pm