Joker

Month: January 2010

  • Zune 4.2 update

    Well this morning at about 7 AM MST I got the following message on zune.net. “zune is unavailable

    As part of continuing efforts to improve our service, Zune is undergoing scheduled maintenance that will prohibit customers from renting and purchasing content for up to 24 hours starting Jan 25 at 10 P.M. (PST) / Jan 26 at 6 A.M. (GMT). Your local video library will continue to be available during this time.

    We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience.” (I only included the English, it looks like they said it in five languages total.)

    I then launched the Zune software & after I tried to sign in to zune.net it told me that there was an upgrade, so I had it update to the 4.2 version. It told me to disconnect my Zune, which I did & the upgrade went without any new issues. I was told I had to reboot at the end which I did.

    After all of that I plugged in my Zune 120 & was told about the firmware update. So I let it upgrade from 3.2 to 3.3 for the firmware on it.

    It looks like the new version didn’t fix the issue I want fixed the most on the desktop software. That is it still tries to download episodes from podcasts that I’ve told it to delete & I also deleted manually to free up disk space.

    They did a better job on dealing with the upgrade this time then last time. I remember with the 4.0 update it took me several hours to figure out that the service was down & I couldn’t get the update until after it was back up.

  • Indie games on Xbox360 require connection to Live

    I saw a recent tweet from XboxSupport that said "@carocat 2 play Indie Games, u must be connected 2 Xbox LIVE 2 start it. After it starts+loads, u can disconnect from LIVE if u want to. ^KS". After seeing them saying that I went & tested it with a single player game called Miner Dig Deep, where I found what they said to be true.

    This is annoying for me as if I take my 360 to a location where I don’t have an Internet connection I can’t even open the game. All I get is a message that says "To play this game, sign in to Xbox Live.", with the option to sign in or not to sign in.

    I’d like it changed so that I’m allowed to have the offline parts work without being signed into live. I’d also like achievement points to be available for the indie games as well. I know I’ve bought some arcade games because they said I could keep an achievement that I earned in the trial of the game.

    The other thing I’d like to see is being able to remove any rating I’ve put on a game. I have one time accidentally rated a game that I hadn’t even played & that made me want to be able to remove the rating I had applied to it. Even if it was implemented in the web site first or only in the web site that would be better than not being able to remove a rating.