Interesting Article


(by Hilary Goldstein)

January 3, 2008 - In December Xbox Live performed poorly. Today, Microsoft responded with a letter to Xbox Live subscribers. In the letter, Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten issued an official apology to Xbox Live members and promised to make it up to everyone affected by these issues. According to Microsoft, the cause of the problems -- which included severe lag and service outages for some -- was a high increase in new Xbox Live members.

To make it up to gamers affected over the holidays, the big MS is offering a free Xbox Live Arcade download. It is unclear if the title will be a new game or one previously available on Xbox Marketplace. Details on the offer are expected within the next few weeks.

Here is the letter in its entirety:


Dear Xbox LIVE Members:

During this past holiday season you helped us break a number of Xbox LIVE records. This included our largest sign-up of new members to Xbox LIVE in our 5 year history and just yesterday you broke the record for the single biggest day of concurrent members ever on the service.

As a result of this massive increase in usage we know that some of you experienced intermittent Xbox LIVE issues over the holiday break. While the service was not completely offline at any given time, we are disappointed in our performance. I would like to take this moment to thank you each and every one of you for your patience and understanding as our team has worked around the clock to return the service to a stable state.

At the same time we would like to offer a token of our appreciation to all of you in celebration of record success for the service. And as a thank you for your loyalty during this holiday period, we will be offering all of our Xbox LIVE members around the world access to a full Xbox LIVE Arcade game that will be available to download free of charge. In the coming weeks we will be sharing the specific details of this offer with you.

Thank you again for helping make Xbox LIVE everything that it is today!

Sincerely,

Marc Whitten

General Manager, Xbox LIVE
Gamertag: Notwen

It is cool they are offering a free game.

Ya, thats cool and all but they need to fix these issues already, Im still getting connection issues!!!

Yup... Me Too!.. Damnit..