Australian Xbox 'Beast Packs' Wont Connect to Xbox Live

Several gamers who purchased Microsoft's new Xbox "Beast Pack", which was released in Australia yesterday, claim the gaming consoles in the pack will not allow them to connect to the Xbox Live service.

The "Beast Pack" product comes bundled with two months' free access to the Xbox Live service. According to one gamer, John Haig, the new pack will allow customers to register a valid username and password, but the console will not properly authenticate to the 'live' service.

While he praised Microsoft's Xbox support staff for their friendliness and professionalism, he says his efforts to resolve the issue through those channels were exhausted. "Basically I was getting the run around with level one support," he told ZDNet Australia. "There may be a breakdown in their process where they can't escalate matters like this because they haven't seen [them] pop up before now."

In all, Haig says he spent around 30 hours troubleshooting the problem. He says he tried four different consoles from four different Beast Packs, sourced from two different shops, and ran into the same problem every time. Figuring the issue may have been related to "Beast Pack" specific machines, he rented an older console from a video store. When he entered the username and password he set up using his "Beast Pack" console, he was able to get on to the 'live' network without a hitch.

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