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Irate gamers demand over $5 million in damages following slate of reported problems over holidays.
By Ina Fried, News.com
Posted Jan 4, 2008 6:33 pm PT

Microsoft now faces a lawsuit over recent problems with its Xbox Live online gaming service. Three Texas residents filed a lawsuit Friday on behalf of themselves and others who have had trouble connecting to Xbox Live in recent weeks.

The suit, filed in US District Court in Houston, claims Microsoft's outages represent a breach of contract and negligent misrepresentation for which the software maker is liable. The suit doesn't claim specific damages, but notes the amount is in excess of $5 million.

In the suit, the plaintiffs allege that Microsoft should have known strong holiday sales would tax its servers. "Microsoft knew the increase in subscriptions would increase game-play on its servers, yet failed to provide adequate access and service to Xbox Live and its subscribers," read the filing.

Microsoft has apologized for the outage and said it would allow Xbox live subscribers to download a free game. A Microsoft representative was not immediately available for comment.

FuzzymusPrime wrote:Why is it always millions? Why can't anyone take this kind of thing to a small claims court?

TheMuffin wrote:I would have prefered a class action suit so I could get some of that change as well. Over two weeks of downtime because Microsoft employees are too damned stupid to understand people get stuff for Christmas....Like game consoles, games and the like.

They brought this upon themselves for being completely ignorant of their customer base. Because of that fact alone, I hope these guys win.

Microsoft celebrated their 10 millionth Xbox Live subscriber about 6 months ago. With an average of $4 a month for fees paid by customers, Microsoft earned around $40,000,000 just in the last month alone. Thats $480,000,000 a year folks. Just from Live subscriptions alone. That doesn't include marketplace downloads, arcade games, etc.

So if $5,000,000 still too much?

Tim Buckley wrote:There is no way to simulate a sudden increase of 700,000 people trying to sign on to your servers. You can estimate, you can look at your current numbers and try to multiply and plan ahead. But a lot of problems may not present themselves in testing, and may only show up when under the actual stress of actual users.