Ok, a bit of background for those new to my little corner of the interwebs. Around 12 months ago with the advent of the new Microsoft Community Games service, I decided to set up a little web site to review the games as they land. It’s called xnPlay. Some of you may have heard of it, some of you may have not. I’m quite proud of some of the work we’ve done over the year and proud of how we’ve been able to get the word out along the way about some of the forthcoming gems to the system. I’m proud of some of the writing that sits over there and I’m proud of the small community of commentators and other reviewers that lurk around the place.

It’s a good place built on honesty, not infallible but with each and every reviewer and commentator being true to their opinions and reasonably open to discuss things without relying on shock news or sensationalism, I’ve been sad to have to leave it at the wayside for the time being. In some ways, I miss that smiley moment when you post up a preview and watch it spread around the net – not for the hits (given I’m the one who has to keep the server on the level, high traffic certainly doesn’t mean any fun for me) but for that warming knowledge that something you care about is something others can see the value in.

I’m not going to proclaim that xnPlay is somehow important but it’s built on love. A harsh love at times, yes, but love none the less. It’s certainly not done for money, that much I can tell you. If it were, I’d have quit long ago.

Here’s the thing though. If I can’t review the games, I can’t write for xnPlay. Right now, I can’t review the games.

Why? A long, slow, gradual death of the dashboard.

So, here’s the thing. In order to run and review for xnPlay I find myself having to download either the trial or full versions of quite a few games. For those who don’t really delve into the Indie Games service too often, this can be between one a day or three or four a day, sometimes more. This takes a bit of time. Downloading the games is the speediest part of this thanks to my rather reasonable connection. If we don’t have a code or .ccgame to rely on, then we’re looking at playing through as much of the 8 minute demo as we can. Repeatedly unless it’s really glaringly obvious that it’s a bit mup.

When I started xnPlay last year, this was a pretty speedy process. I belted through as many of the launch titles as I could in only a few days. As time has gone on, things have got increasingly more difficult as despite clearing out the rubbish that each one stores on my HDD on a regular basis and clearing the cache, the NXE has been descending into unusable over time. With each passing month it’s got less and less comfortable to use. It’s taking longer and longer to populate the games list making each and every test of a game into a game of luck. Will the dash populate after I’ve dropped out of the game? If so, how long will it take? Is it going to be 2 minutes, 4 minutes or longer?

After two months of NXE roulette, a fortnight ago, it’s all but dead. I get one shot at it when I first boot up if I’m lucky, if not, the games list hangs, locks up and I have to reboot the 360 in order to try again without the guarantee of success. If I manage to get it to run one game, it’ll hang on the next. I mentioned this last week in the comments section of xnPlay and dropped an idle tweet about it. It seems I’m not alone in suffering these symptoms. Those who’ve downloaded and played a lot of titles are finding their 360 or their gamertag becoming increasingly unusable.

The scale of the problem? I don’t know and truth be told, that’s not really my problem. I just want to be able to get back and play and review some games. That’s not going to happen for a while. I’ve been through the drill of support and been informed I have to return my 360 for repair outside of its warranty. That’s going to have to wait, given I’m pretty skint right now.

I’ve been lucky I guess, my 360 only bought the curse of the RROD the once but long enough ago to let it fall out of the warranty area.

Bugger me, I didn’t expect the NXE to all but kill itself in one crucial department simply for me reviewing games though. That’s the bit that sorta chafes y’know? It would seem I’ve killed off my 360 trying to help promote and review XBLIG games.

In the meantime, whilst I try and get this sorted, xnPlay is all but down to xAD holding the reigns. I apologise to all the devs and readers for us running on low power of recent times and I apologise for not bringing this up sooner. As soon as I can get back on the road, I will get back on the road and normal service will resume.