9/9/99--Happy Birthday, Dreamcast!!!

Wednesday is the tenth birthday of the Sega Dreamcast.  It was launched on September 9, 1999, thereby making it the coolest launch date ever.  (Take that, Beatles' Rock Band.)

The Dreamcast was well known for being awesome.  It was better than the Playstation 2 in every way, such as having memory cards (Visual Memory Units) that could act like Giga-Pets back when they were cool.  It ran on Windows CE and used a pecurser to USB called Maple Leaf for its controllers.

The awesomeness ended abruptly a couple of years later when stupid Sega of Japan decided to kill it even though it was making tons of money because of some ass-backwards company tradition/samurai loyalty conspiracy involving Sega of America.  Cool games that were completed, such as Half-Life with Blue Shift were never released.

The Silent Scope gun was never released because of the Columbine shootings.  The completed Propeller arena wasn't released because of 9/11.  Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 and other games were canned because the Dreamcast was discontinued.

It had an awesome start but got killed by bad business decisions.  R.I.P., Dreamcast.  Your version of MvC2 is still the greatest.

Unless you count the LIVE re-release.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is Crap

 My nephew liked it, but he's clearly wrong.  If you love Deadpool, you'll hate this movie.

What "Casual Gaming" SHOULD mean

I'm done with the Xbox 360. I'm cutting my losses, which are several hundred dollars after I factor in accessories. I didn't write about it earlier because I've basically been in the hospital since the day I made my last post.

Games used to be something I could do to relax while I convalesced. I'm switching over to DRM-free PC games, like World of Goo purchased through 2dboy.com.  To me, "casual gaming" means not having to show ID every time I want to play the game.

The New Supervisors

Yes, this is tedious for me, too, but this is the only place I have to air my grievances.

It's important to know that I've not spent over 12 hour on the phone because I just don't like the answer I'm getting.  I've done it because I keep getting told that my issue is understood and that I'm right in my understanding of the way MS policy is supposed to work, and I'm told that it's being taken care of.  Then I'm told that I'm wrong and that no agent would ever say what the previous agent really did say and that there's no possible solution.  It's a real rip-saw effect.

Aside from everything else, the supervisor Jim lied to me last night about a refund. I didn't ask for a refund, but he offered it for the one Arcade game that is never working whether I'm signed in to Live or not. He said I wouldn't be able to see it on my account for an hour or two, so I'd have to be off the phone to see it, but he again used that word "guarantee" and said that he had just credited 800 MS points to my account. He then closed the Service Request # so that I can't call about it again because it's been "resolved."

I've appreciated all the tips on how to navigate customer service, but unfortunately I'm finding that (unlike in the past) for the past month or so nothing gets through. I keep getting assured that things are being taken care of, but for REAL this time, and then I never hear back. If I call to check on it or to give more information that was requested of me, I'm told that for SUPER real this time the resolution that I was told about the last time was incorrect, and that they have to terminate the call because the issue has been "resolved," the resolution being that there is no resolution.

There seems to be a new class of "supervisors" that are significantly less well trained than other supervisors (or than any supervisor in the past.) Their job seems to be to deny the exhistance of published Microsoft policies and to deny everything that previous supervisors have told you. Regaurdless of the issue or the previous status of it, they will repeat the mantra "This is a management issue," followed by refusal to escalate it. This replaces the old mantras of "It's a developer issue." They will never let you speak to another agent. E-mail support appologizes for the phone agents, gives you 1-2 new SR#s, and just tells you to phone it in again.

All support is piped through the phone system, you'll have to talk to dozens of agents about any significant issue, ad you'll be lucky to ever find 2 that agree on Microsoft policy, the limit or extent of their own authority, or even what it is that you've asked for help with. This is especially problematic when you are following one set of instructions and, at the first turn, you're told that those instructions were wrong, your actually just SOL and that last supervisor was incorrect to say otherwise. I've been told twice that one specific supervisor would be the only one to handle my case from now on, and that was incorrect and impossible both times.

Everyone had made me go over not just my current issue, but the entire history of every service request I've ever made plus my motivation for having purchased an HDMI 360 before they will start to talk. They say they need to enter it, and that the entering of that data by them is my only recourse. They make lots of typing sounds. However, whenever I call in for any reason (or even the 2 times that I've gotten a call from them) they claim to have reviewed the detailed notes on my case, but then they have to be told everything for the first time and put me on hold to enter it again. There are literally at least a dozen different times that my issue information has been entered in detail only to have been somehow lost by the time I speak to the next agent.

The strategy now really seems to be to wear down the customer with dozens of meaningless, irrelevant questions, including demanding service request numbers from issues that were solved over a year ago and asking for the details of those already solved issues. I could tell that most agents were not listening, and that they were only waiting for me to finish speaking before repeating that, despite what I had been told before, there's nothing to be done.

I guarantee you; I just can't be sure.

 I just spent another 3 hours on the phone with Xbox customer support.  I was calling to ask whether or not to send the console that just broke in for repair before the DRM transfer to it has been completed.  I was told that it was a moot point because, contrary to what the last 3 supervisors had told me, there is no possible way to manually restore licenses under any circumstances.  I was also told that the following article doesn't  exist http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930017.

I was told that there will be an investigation into the theft of my Windows Live ID by a Microsoft employee, but after guaranteeing that there would be one he said that there's no way to let me know what it entails, when it starts, when it ends, what they discover, whether anyone was held responsible, or if it will happen.  He insisted that it is outside the bounds of customer service, but he refused to let me know who I could contact about it.

People's credit card numbers are attached to Windows LIve IDs, to say nothing of their good names and professional reputations.  These aren't gamertags, these are the cross-platform IDs that Microsoft lets you keep separate from you gamertags because business people might not want their associates to see their gamer profiles.