A Day Without An Xbox Live Connection

By Joe Haygood | June 16, 2009

For the last few days, we have been told that Xbox Live would be shut down for the day on June 16th, but when the outage actually comes, you forget how much you are tied to the service.

Last night, I was still working my way through Lost: Season One, when 12:06 AM brought the dreaded message, “Xbox Live Is Disconnected”.  While I was not in the mood to game at that point in the evening, I did find it amusing that true to form, Microsoft was behind schedule by five minutes.

But in all seriousness, it is funny to look at how dependant you are to your Xbox Live services until you cannot get access to it.  Things like Netflix, which requires you to be logged into Xbox Live, are no go during the outage.  People that spend huge amounts of time with Call of Duty 4 multiplayer, or Gears of War 2 multiplayer will probably take a big does of withdrawl by not being able to play.  For me, I am not sure if the Games for Windows Live service will be able to log in, which affects my access to saved games in Fallout 3 at lunch, so I am changing up what I will play on my lunch break. 

But fear not, there are some things that you can do to conquer the Xbox Live Blues.  You could:

• Read a book
• Watch some Burn Notice on Hulu.com
• Single player games are cool too, like Bioshock or Mass Effect
• Experience the outdoors and nature (That might be too much to ask)
• Clean up around the house
• Play a real board version of Battleship or Ticket to Ride
• Play a PC game (again, too much to ask)
• Draw a timeline for Infinite Crisis

And if all of these sound like massive amounts of fail, you could go to the backup plan of sitting there, clicking the Connect to Xbox Live button over and over until your connection is restored.  All you have to lose is your dignity.