The guy who got the Xbox One early and was banned gets a surprise from Microsoft

Friday, college freshman André Weingarten received his pre-ordered Xbox One in the mail from Target thanks in part to an obvious mistake made by Target.

After logging on and playing through several matches of Call of Duty: Ghosts, which he also purchased, Weingarten was unable to log back into Xbox LIVE, met with a message saying, “This console is banned for violating the Xbox Live terms of service,' and to please contact customer support.”

Earlier that week, Weingarten hadn’t even pre-ordered the console, and didn’t believe he was going to be able to snag one before the Nov. 22 release date. Truth be told, Target had a few available online and four days later it arrived on his doorstep.

"I went from panicking at not having one on Monday to getting it on Friday," said Weingarten to Kotaku.

Weingarten, also known as “Moonlight Swami,” took to Twitter and YouTube to provide information on the console, including start up time (17 seconds to get to the dashboard), game download sizes, and an unboxing video that went out to his 13,000 subscribers, garnering over 76,000 views.

As the story goes, his video was pulled for a short while and he was without access to his legitimately purchased Xbox One.

However, the story ends well for Weingarten. He was able to chat with Xbox LIVE’s Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb who assured him that the console ban wasn’t permanent and that he would be unbanned prior to the console’s street date. He also included a surprise for Weingarten’s troubles.

"Microsoft recognized that it was Target's error and not mine," Weingarten said to Kotaku. "They said a few days before launch I'll be unbanned. I can't go into too much detail but, basically [Major Nelson] says everything will be resolved. They're inviting me to the Xbox One launch event."

Good for Weingarten. Good for Microsoft. Tears.

Source: [Kotaku]