Crackdown (Halo 3 Beta Delivery Device) Fails

I went to download the Halo 3 Beta via Crackdown this morning only to find that the link wasn't active. Interesting. I thought it should have been live at around 10 pm last night. I waited till this morning so that I could download it during off-peak download times.

I jump in on the interweb to check out what the problem might be and there is a special sticky at bungie.net devoted to the topic. Nice. Bungie had posted this message: "Crackdown Delay: We Know! Posted by lukems at 5/16/2007 5:22 AM PDT Frankie writes: With any luck this will be a short delay. People entering the Beta through other methods - Friends and Family, Rule of Three and so on, are unaffected."

I go to check out Major Nelson and see what he has to say about it and his blog has been replaced with this message: "We're aware that some users are having difficulty downloading the Halo 3 multiplayer beta via Crackdown. Bungie Studios is working with the Xbox Live team to resolve this as quickly as possible - stay tuned. Gamers entering the beta through other means, such as the Friends and Family remain unaffected. I am headed back to Seattle in a few hours, so I’ll be offline while I am in the air. For the most up to date information, keep an eye on Bungie.net for the latest from Frankie regarding this issue. This site is experiencing an excessive traffic amount of traffic at this time, so sorry for the temporary nature of this message. We’re working on getting back online as soon as we can." Interesting that his website has a specific message about the Halo 3 Beta Crackdown download.

Looks like Microsoft have done it again. Their theme song should be that Brittany Spears song. "Woops, we did it again." With such a short window on the beta period Microsoft are going to have some extremely unhappy customers. I wonder how many players decided to pick up Crackdown at the last minute just to find that they can't even download the Halo 3 beta.

I am not overly fussed about the delay. I will play the beta demo to have a look at the gameplay and graphics, but I wasn't too concerned about its release. I imagine there is going to be a whole lot of abuse and what not levelled at Microsoft today from gamers. Will be interesting.