Let me start by saying I am a huge proponent of the Xbox Live Video Marketplace. I’ve said it needed to be done, and I applauded it when it was formally announced. I’m also an early adopter of the service, renting V for Vendetta on day one of the service.

And then reality set in.

Four days later, I finally finished my 6.7GB download, after several disconnections and basically leaving the Xbox 360 on 24 hours a day. I swear, if I get a Ring of Red because of this, I’ll sue. Meanwhile, I was not the only one having problems. Reportedly, the “unanticipated popularity” of the service was to blame. Meaning, it probably performed about as good as it should have, and Microsoft got caught with its pants down. Over a holiday weekend, no less. Personally having to babysit my Xbox 360 sporadically during my days off wasn’t much of an inconvenience, compared to the grueling endless hours of debugging and conference calls the Microsoft technicians had to endure.

Nonetheless, such a miscalculation did not go unnoticed by the bloggers, as both Kotaku and Gizmodo damned the service outage loudly, mostly for the fact consumers were burdened to call an 800 number and reclaim lost Microsoft points. An article titled “360 Video Continues To Suck”, two days into the launch of the service, is not a good start. And in a clear case of “Don’t Shoot the Messenger,” Major Nelson threw himself to the mercy of the horde. Among the calls for Microsoft to adopt BitTorrent for Xbox Live downloads, something I had suggested months ago, there were a few choice comments, like the following:

Aren`t you Microsoft & a reference to the rest of the IT-World?

Don’t you make stress-tests in advance?

Just doesn’t seem right what is happening here…

Xbox Live works as a gaming service, but every time Microsoft adds some ancillary service they encounter problems like this. E3 downloads, Xbox Live Arcade, now this. Looking back, these may all look like minor growing pains, but as each new problem reminds us of all the previous problems we had to deal with, the service will wear the blemish a lot longer than Microsoft would want. Especially when those doing the complaining are all paying subscribers.