Mini-torial – It’s going to be a long,slow week on Xbox Live

by: Chuck - posted: 1/22/2008 9:04:00 PM

This week Microsoft will be providing gamers with a free copy of Undertow as a reward for putting up with the service disruptions that plagued the system during the holidays (and still seem be happening sporadically).   The game will be free for everyone to download starting Wednesday.  Keep in mind that the game is also one of the larger games available on the service, weighing in at 50MB.

This week will also see the debut of the demo for The Club and Devil May Cry 4.  The Club is the highly anticipated (at least by me) action shooter from Bizarre Creations  and the Devil May Cry 4 demo will mark the first time the series has appeared on anything other than Sony hardware.  Both are going to be big hits and both will have large footprints (The Club demo is well over 1GB in size and I would guess Devil May Cry is going to be similar in size).

See a problem?

I’m not sure who’s doing the scheduling at Microsoft but this week is going to tax Xbox Live as much if not more than the holidays did.  While the two demos are Gold member exclusives this week, people are going to be downloading Undertow whether they are really interested in the game or not.  This situation could create a perfect DLC Storm and cause yet another round of service issues on Xbox Live.  This would be unacceptable for gamers who are still bitter over not being able to use the service during their vacations.

I hope I’m wrong but I’ve been trying to download the demo for The Club for the last two hours and I’m still at 5% complete.  We’ll find out later this week but if I’m Major Nelson I’m keeping the flame retardant suit in my office this week.