Will Microsoft Learn from this for XBox One?

Currently I can’t sign in to XBox Live. The service is down, and so it won’t let me log in.

Which is quite in annoying in and of itself, but it means that I can’t sign into my console either. Apparently there is no provision to sign in to a user profile in an "offline mode" – you either sign in via the internet or you don’t sign in at all.

And since I can’t sign in to my console, I can’t get access to a fair number of my save games, and quite a few of the games I have downloaded from XBox Live arcade.

So instead of having a fully functional games console, I now have – through NO FAULT OF MY OWN – a very expensive doorstop.

Now – this is annoying enough, but the fact I can play one or two games makes it slightly less annoying. 

But if the rumours/reports/stories about the next generation of XBox are true (The XBox One / XBone) – that it has to connect to the internet once every 24 hours or it won’t let you play any games at all – then what happens in a situation like this?

What happens when XBox Live – the service Microsoft themselves provide – goes down and refuses connections? Does that mean every single console throughout the world will stop playing games until Microsoft get off their arses and fix the issue? Or will there be contingencies for that sort of thing?

Not to mention – what happens if my ISP goes down for two days because of a fire or a problem? Am I to be prevented from playing games I legally bought on a console I legally bought just because I happen to pick an ISP that got struck by lightening?

This whole thing is ill-conceived, and – until Microsoft can answer these (and many, many more) questions, there is no way in hell I am going to consider even thinking about getting an xbox one console when they come out. I would rather commit my own brand of blasphemy and go to PS4 than risk having yet another doorstop sat on my coffee table.

I am just running another test now, but somehow I suspect they won’t have fixed the problem and I still won’t be able to play what I want to play. 

Yup – still down. 

And so I take one step further away from the future xbox purchases.