Xbox 360 Sky Player down, relaunching 'in phases' today

by JC Fletcher on Oct 28th 2009 12:00PM

While the Xbox 360 Sky Player apparently launched in the UK yesterday as planned, things veered away from the plan almost immediately thereafter. The service was "suspended" shortly after launch, for what must be the best possible problem in Microsoft's eyes: too many subscribers.

"Unfortunately due to the unprecedented levels of simultaneous demand," a statement on Xbox.com reads, "we did not have the capacity to satisfy all service requests and therefore temporarily suspended all access to the service." The service is being reinstated in phases today, presumably with some upgrades in place to deal with the demand. An earlier statement (reproduced on Engadget) specified tomorrow as the target date for the relaunch -- it seems likely that all users will be returned to their regularly scheduled programming then.

Source

Tags: Microsoft, sky-player, skytv, streaming-video, uk, Xbox-360, xbox-live

Reader Comments (50)

I have it back now, its gone from spotlight, but is there in video marketplace.

Live sports is lush!

Are the sports in HD?
How Much Does It cost,
Many channels?

Its not in HD no.
I dont know how much it costs, I am using my parents account, but I think you need multiroom, and sports if you want sports, movies if you want movie etc...
The service is fine for what it is really, on demand content is useful as well, you can also get it from channels that you cant watch live (SKY1 and so on)

isaac I recall reading somewhere that plans start as little as £16/month

If you live in UK you will have Sky. How could they not see this coming?

Well, for the initial rollout, they only offered a catalog of shows on dental hygiene and fine cuisine.

Microsoft thought the regional demand for this content would be near zero.

Funny because I live in the UK and I don't have Sky. Kind of like a large portion of the population.

How is this thing anyway? Pros, Cons?

They activated SKY(net?) and "things veered away from the plan almost immediately thereafter." Who would've thought?

+1 for the attempt
-1 for the ongoing thought of the single play through of Terminator Salvation in my head....thanks

Companies really suck at preparing for demand anymore.

XBOX Live better not stutter on 11.10.09 or December 25th.

11.10?

Modern Warfare 2.

oh....I doubt that will cause XBL to go down...hell Halo 3 didn't and I don't see this doing those numbers on 360....could be wrong of course

Yeah, you're wrong. I have zero interest in the game and didn't like COD4, but there is no denying that this WILL be the largest video game launch in history. The preorder numbers alone are staggering.

pre-orders to always equal sales tho....KZ2 had over 1 million pre-orders in the UK alone....and didn't move that much the first month

mietha he's not wrong, he said "on the 360." I have no doubt that MW:2 will sell more copies, but it's also a multiplatform game. So the sales of the game will be split between the PS3 and 360. So I bet Halo 3 will have put more strain on Live than MW:2 will

I wasn't on when H3 was released, but I do know on Xmas that year and a few days afterward, Live was spotty.

But think about it: We've got two years of console sales and what may be one of the biggest releases of all time coming up. Sure they've expanded their infrastructure, but given events such as this Sky PLayer incident, I have no reason to expect they are adequately prepared.

That's why it's a preview so they can prepare.

so.....why do i live in the US and have an xbox live update then (that i can't download, btw)? is it related to this?

Mine took 40ish minutes this morning. I didn't notice anything immediately different. Lame.

that update might have been for the banning of 3rd party memory cards

my internet is firewalled up the wazoo and i can't download the damn update. means no xbox live for me for a few weeks. ugh.

http://majornelson.com/archive/2009/10/28/xbox-360-system-update-wireless-adapter-wpa2-support.aspx

WPA2 support was added for the Wireless Adaptor and most likely support for the new Wireless N adaptors.

This sucks, tomorrow? Homosexual much?

I just came out from under my rock. What the hell is sky player?

sky is a satellite tv provider in the U.K. and Ireland and is some hay soon LOL coming to xbox live in the U.K. and Ireland so basically if you live in Ireland or the U.K. you can watch live tv on your xbox

Where is this for my Uverse service, bastards... they announced it, what, 3-4 years ago? I don't want to pay $7/mo for a cable box when I could just get me a $200 xbox 360 to put in my bedroom, heck I might even play games on it.

The service is total crap the amount of channels and the price is ridiculous you get 20 channels for £15 it is a total rip. To add the sports channels is another £19 and another £18 for film channels thats over £40 for around 25 channels you can't get stuff off the film service unless you have the film package and you can't get sports on demand unless you have the sports package total waste of time to be honest don't worry other countries you are not missing out on anything and also there is no HD content wtf!

Wish sky for 360 would come to the US. :(

Well we wish we had netflix (or some equivalent). In all fairness we do have PlayTV for the PS3 as well though

And I wish you had netflix too ;)

Does anyone know if this is going to have a trial? (as in a trial Sky account so you can try it out for 30 days or something rather than the trial that is being talked about here). I don't have sky (sadly I live with my folks who don't want to spend the money or have a dish installed) but I would really like to try this out. The main reason I ask is that my broadband is piss poor (1.2mbps on a good day, but usually about 800kbps or less. Unfortunately this is due to where I live and not money or ISP) so want to know how well this would work on my connection

Yeah man, there's a code you need to redeem once you download to sky player. I haven't done it yet myself, due to the player being taken down and everything. Once it gets back up, go to "accounts and settings" and enter in the code "XBOX1MONTHFREE".

@herby08

Lets see you run a video game news site and do better. So, shut up.

The joystiq comment system strikes again! In all fairness they should do batter than they do - they do have staff in the UK and elsewhere, and it's a commercial site as well so...

HOW is it when anything happens on the 360 outside of the USA joystiq are SO slow on picking up on it?!
This happened YESTERDAY, and this post is 1 hour old, really you need to get some international staff!
EPIC FAIL joystiq, i expect better!

Fair point - I listened to this on Radio 1 yesterday evening!

So gives yourselves cookies. Start your own gaming news site since you get such amazingly quick news.

Joystiq isn't at fault, xbox UK is. This would be the equivalent of the netflix service launching and failing, and no-one hearing about it for 24 hours. There has been almost no official word on Sky Player at all.

Pull your finger out MS, the US border isn't the end of your paying customers

WTF? its messed up again, too many people on it = the system has a fail.

My brother is having the same trouble

Unfortunately the entire SKY Player network seems to be down with a DNS error including their website for live and On Demand. Seems either the amount of 360's connecting has overloaded the entire SKY Player network... or SKY engineers chose to perform DNS maintainence at peak time.... surely they wouldn't do that... would they? ;)

You should all cancel your Sky accounts over this.

Actually, just cancel your Sky accounts anyway; funding Rupert Murdoch's evil empire just so you can get Lost and The Simpsons is shitty.

i'm inclined to agree. instead, i'm getting a friends multiroom login and will be stealing entertainment. TAKE THAT MURDOCH.

is the sky player sever down again?
i went on it on my 360 and it says that there is a connection error?
and do you need the sky packages to get that show like do u need sport channels on ur sky for home to be able to watch it on the 360??

only got sky news working with it at the moment, but having my avatar blow kisses at convicted criminals and cheer national tragedies makes me laugh a bit too much.

Wish we had something like this in the US.

grr. this doesn't apply to me as i'm not in the UK, but this is pretty stupid. maybe should have used some of that LIVE subscription money to pay for more servers or whatever.

I managed to download this service when it came out then is was removed from dashboard. Ive signed up and paid for the lot. Ive found that I could access this but sometimes get errors. Im very unhappy with this poor service and would of expected alot better from these giant companies. I wanted to watch something tonight live, bang on 11.00, error, sky says no. FFS how annoying. This irritates the hell out of me and i will not be signed up to this piss poor product. £50 for this hasstle. No thanks, it rather wipe my ass with a rose bush.

Thanks sky, xbox should have joined with vmedia. Shame on you!!!

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Xbox 360 Sky Player down, relaunching 'in phases' today

Reader Comments (50)

Posted: Oct 28th 2009 12:06PM Crimson Major said

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