I was not overly excited about downloading the demo and heading off to work but I was hoping to maybe get in a game before I left for work. I have no meetings today so it would be a perfect "sick" day to spend busting heads in Halo 3. Well after breakfast I went downstairs and powered up my 360 to start the download process for Halo 3 beta. I was greeted with an auto update for Crackdown and after that finished I went to the download area to get the Halo 3 beta. To my surprise the link to the beta was still inactive. I was surprised so I went online to find out the Crackdown beta users where not able to download the beta yet. It seems there was a problem that only affected the folks that got into the beta via Crackdown. So I headed into work and am watching to see if anything changes.

As I write this it is still not available and the internet is pissed. Over 600,000 copies of Crackdown have been purchased and I'm guessing 90% of those people will be playing the beta. Some people have been so angered over this that they are suggesting people ignore the Halo 3 beta and go play Gears of War instead. Considering the beta is only three weeks long I'm not surprised people are pissed. I'm sure several people took the day off work and there is now a rumor that a fix will not be available till tomorrow. People have been waiting for the beta since it was announced in November.

It's little comfort to know that Halo 3 will be released on September 25th in the US. That date works on many levels for Microsoft since it will come out before Grand Theft Auto and will still allow them to have a big game released in November. My guess is Microsoft is hoping Fable 2 will be ready for Christmas and can fill that void in November. That would also mean that Microsoft would be releasing it two biggest games from last generation in the same quarter. Both titles will sell over a million units and could make for one incredibly profitable quarter for Microsoft.

Speaking about profits, Sony just announced their games division lost 1.88 billion dollars in last fiscal year. Considering all that flack Microsoft got for losing $258 million last quarter and how they should get out of the gaming console business I wonder if those same people will say the same thing about Sony? Microsoft has only had one profitable quarter in they games division since they launched the Xbox but like Sony they make billions in other parts of their business to offset the loses in game consoles.