MMA Mania reports that XBox Live users that tried to order UFC 141 will now get UFC 142 for free this weekend. In addition, spurned users will receive a month of XBox Live Gold for free.
Originally, XBox planned a big rollout of the UFC on its platform by offering UFC 141 to 30,000 users. Server issues appear to be the cause of the difficulties which left the 30,000 plus people that signed up out in the cold. A definite public relations disaster. MMA Mania provides us with an email received by affected users.
Via MMA Mania:
You’re receiving this note because you were one of the many fans who registered to experience UFC 141 on Xbox LIVE.
First and foremost, please allow us to apologize for the technical issues that impacted your access to UFC 141 on Xbox LIVE. We remain committed to providing you with the quality experience you expect, therefore we completed a thorough investigation into the issues that prevented you from enjoying UFC 141 on Xbox LIVE, and we’re confident that we’ve addressed the problems.
We’d love it if you’d give us a second chance, and we’d like to offer you another opportunity to experience UFC on Xbox LIVE free of charge with UFC RIO: Aldo vs. Mendes on January 14th, 2012. Instructions on how to access UFC RIO on Xbox LIVE are outlined below. In addition, we’re providing all those impacted by the UFC 141 technical issues with one month of free Xbox LIVE Gold membership.
As we continue to polish and refine the application, new functionality and features will be released. In the meantime, we believe we’re building the most compelling, interactive way to experience the fun and excitement of UFC in your living room, and now it is our job to prove it to you.
Thank you for being a valued Xbox LIVE member.
Sincerely,
The Xbox LIVE Team
UFC on XBox Live will also be showing the UFC 142 press conference live this morning.
Payout Perspective:
If you were an affected XBox user let us know if you received the above email. This appears to be a good response by XBox. Not only does it quickly address the issues by giving users the chance to see the next UFC PPV, but it gives them something else: a month free of its XBox Live Gold membership. The month free is minimal cost to Microsoft and gives users a chance to get hooked on the Gold membership. We’ll see if Microsoft actually gains Gold users from this. In the end, Microsoft acknowledge its error and is trying to make good.
While there still may be some skeptics about the service, its a swift response by the Microsoft. Of course, comparing the two cards, Brock Lesnar was still the big draw and going from Lesnar to an Aldo-Mendes main event may be disappointing. In addition, Saturday night’s Patriots-Broncos game may take away another segment of MMA fans due to the “Tebow effect”.
What about the other 100,000+ fans that wanted to watch it on their Xbox?!?!? Don’t hype something to only let the majority of fans down Microsoft and UFC!!!!!!
I had a house full of people and was very disappointed as I don’t have cable or satellite as an alternate. Boggles my mind that for a product that costs $55 that they weren’t prepared to handle it.
I’m sure there are thousands of customers that will never get the ppv comp email from ms, including myself. It simply was not possible to even process payment or sign up during the outage.
From what i read on the forums, the majority of people complaining won free passes for the ppv. I just wanted to pay and enjoy the event.
This weekend I’ll be watching the ppv by ordering it through the UFC website and not Xbox live.
It’s Tebow time. This will be the lowest purchased PPV in recent times.
Hope MS gets it right this time or they may have blown this new platform.
I agree this will be a low PPV. But i dont think Tebow will have anything to do with it. Anderson Silva in Vegas got 800K buys. Silva in Brazil got 300K buys. So a Brazil card is going to suck here regardless. Add to it that it is headlined by a new division, lighter weight fighters, and a champ few know and a contender even few know about. I expect 200-260K buys. But The UFC could careless about the domestic buys on this. It will be huge in Brazil and that is the market they are cultivating at the moment. Any buys they get on this event will just be a bonus.
News flash… the UFC always cares about it’s PPV buys in North America.