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MICROSOFT CONFIRMS FREE GAME COMING TO LIVE SUBSCRIBERS

If you remember, last week we reported on a rumor that Microsoft was considering compensating Xbox Live members for the recent string of outages and issues with the service by giving away a free game – as it would turn out, that rumor has now been partially confirmed by Microsoft. 

In a recent post on MajorNelson.com, Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten confirmed that the company does plan on giving away a free Live Arcade title to Live subscribers.

"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 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!" – Marc Whitten

Interestingly, the above statement doesn't state that the game is being given out because of the issues, but rather as a gift to members because of the growth of the service – something which certainly may have led to the opening several people in Texas felt was needed to file a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft for the aforementioned issues.

 

It still remains to be seen just what game Microsoft plans on giving away, though at this point anything other than a quality title that no one currently owns is certain to just fan the internet flames even more. 

January 6, 2008 Posted by | Downtime, Free Games, Microsoft, Rumor Confirmed, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Arcade | Leave a comment

XBOX LIVE STILL RECOVERING, RUMORS OF COMPENSATION SURFACE

As many of you have no doubt noticed, Xbox Live has been a bit wonky since just after Christmas. Numerous reports of issues with signing in, buying marketplace content, accessing downloaded content and matchmaking problems in both Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 have been flooding in since just after the start of the holidays.

Rest assured, the folks at Microsoft are well aware of the situation and, according to Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb, have been working around the clock to get the problems resolved. While most of the service is back up and running, some users may still be experiencing issues – and unfortunately, there is still no ETA on a full fix.

"You may have noticed that the LIVE service has been having a few issues over the past few days. This includes things like signing in, matchmaking and account recovery. Not everyone has had problems, but I know some of you have and I wanted to give you and update. While the service was never completely offline, problems like this are not acceptable. The entire LIVE team has been working day and night to ensure that you can have a great LIVE experience. While we’re not done yet, I wanted to let you know that things are getting better each hour and that no one on the team is going anywhere until the job is done. Thanks for your patience.

Edit: As people have noticed, we have made good progress. We have a bit more work to do, but we’re doing much better now. I know some of you still may be having issues, and we’re working on those. Oh, and Happy New Year to those that are celebrating." – Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb

Before anyone runs off to get the torches, according to a gaming blog called The Bitbag (found by way of Kotaku), an unnamed source at Microsoft confirmed that the company does plan on compensating Xbox Live Gold members for the outage, though no exact details on what that would entail were given.

"I got some info from my Microsoft contact after questioning whether or not Gold Members will get thrown a bone for all the downtime they had to sit through. While nothing has been officially announced, they have stated, “…we will definitely be doing something for our Gold members that weren’t able to get online over the last week.”" – Torrence Davis, The Bitbag

While it's just an unconfirmed rumor at this point, I certainly wouldn't be surprised to see at least a few days added onto everyone's expiry dates or the like.

January 1, 2008 Posted by | Downtime, Major Nelson, Microsoft, Rumors, Xbox 360, Xbox Live, Xbox Live Marketplace | 1 Comment

XBOX LIVE DOWNTIME ANNOUNCED – 6/27/06

Major Nelson is reporting that Xbox Live will be down today for routine maintenance starting at approximately 5am EST and running through 9am EST. The Major stresses that the downtime is only for routine maintenance and no new features will be debuting. The full text of the Major’s message is as follows;

“On Tuesday June 27th from 0200-0600 PT Xbox Live will be offline for maintenance. As a result, the ‘My Xbox’ section of Xbox.com will be unavailable, and the Xbox forums will be in read only mode (you won’t be able to post.) The remainder of Xbox.com will be available.

Click this link to find out what time the maintenance will begin in your time zone

This is for maintenance, there are no new features that will appear when the service comes back online. This is all for server maintenance…nothing more, nothing less. “ -Major Nelson

Don’t believe me? Fine, check out the posting at Major Nelson’s blog here. Harumph.

June 27, 2006 Posted by | Announcements, Downtime, Maintenance, Microsoft, Xbox 360, Xbox Live | Leave a comment