{"id":2123,"date":"2009-02-11T17:12:19","date_gmt":"2009-02-11T22:12:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=2123"},"modified":"2009-02-11T18:00:54","modified_gmt":"2009-02-11T23:00:54","slug":"xbox-livecom-lameness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=2123","title":{"rendered":"XBox Live.com Lameness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here is the Xbox Live homepage as of right now in Firefox:<\/p>\n

xbl_ff.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

And here is the same page in IE7:<\/p>\n

xbl_ie.jpg<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n

I first noticed this yesterday. That is just amazingly stupid and lame. Note that the entire live.xbox.com page acts this way. No matter what link I click on, it waits a fortnight or two and then comes back with “Page Unavailable”.<\/p>\n

I can access the site using IE, although it still loads agonizingly slow. The only reason I wanted to bother is because:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. In Fable 2, there is a chest you encounter very early in the game that tells you to go to Fable 2.com to learn how to open it.\n<\/li>\n
  2. Fable 2.com redirects to the XBL site.\n<\/li>\n
  3. The XBL site doesn’t work with Firefox. (Version 3.0.5)\n<\/li>\n
  4. Visiting the site with IE will get it to load, albeit with a load time measured in minutes<\/em>.\n<\/li>\n
  5. Once the page is loaded, there is nothing whatsoever about this chest, anywhere that I can see.\n<\/li>\n
  6. Googling about reveals that opening the chest involves playing some Flash-based game on their site. Chicken kicker or somesuch. I no longer care about the damn chest, and am only enduring this to see how far down the rabbit hole this fool’s errand leads.\n<\/li>\n
  7. Answer: This far. The chicken game doesn’t load, even using IE7. I just get a big old blank window. No prompt, no error.\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The game has been out, what? Not quite fourth months yet? <\/p>\n

    It was foolish to build a URL into a game like that. The concept was hopelessly lame, even if it worked right. And it was pathetic how ineptly the whole thing crapped itself when I tried to check it out. There is a certain beauty in how completely and utterly they managed to fail at something so mundane. <\/p>\n

    Just out of curiosity: Can anyone confirm the Firebox \/ IE behavior I observed?<\/p>\n

    EDIT: Looks like I’m the only one with loading issues. Odd, since everything else<\/em> loads with flawless alacrity, but you can’t argue with results. <\/p>\n

    Fine, their website isn’t completely screwed. <\/p>\n

    But putting a URL in a game is still a Bad Idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Here is the Xbox Live homepage as of right now in Firefox: And here is the same page in IE7: I first noticed this yesterday. That is just amazingly stupid and lame. Note that the entire live.xbox.com page acts this way. No matter what link I click on, it waits a fortnight or two and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}