This little article seriously made me chuckle. It’s not so much that this kid got his XBox Live account suspended for sneaking into the Halo 3 beta, it’s the length of the suspension. Cutting someone’s access for a length of time that may very well be longer than humanity will last is really going overboard on Microsoft’s part. Besides, there’s an easy (and expensive) way to get around the suspension.
1) Buy a new XBox 360, with a new GamerTag (or something like that)
2) Sign up for XBox Live again.
3) Continue to play on XBox Live, minus any points acquired
4) ????
5) PROFIT!!!
But still, a punishment this harsh certainly has its reasons. Cheating is a common occurence on networks like XBox Live, and Microsoft has probably decided to put its foot down for real, to show that cheating will not be tolerated. Whether it will work across the board…that’s something that won’t happen, I think. As long as there are games, there will be those who will cheat to get what they want.