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.

• Xbox LIVE Status (Updated) – Major Nelson
• Microsoft Taking Care Of It's Gold Members After Last Weeks Live Outage – The Bitbag
• Microsoft to Compensate Customers For LIVE Downtime? – Kotaku

XBOX LIVE ARCADE UPDATE: SENSIBLE WORLD OF SOCCER AVAILABLE AGAIN

Just an update to a previous story – According to Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb, the problems with Sensible World of Soccer have been corrected and the game is once again available for purchase via the Xbox Live Marketplace.

Those of you who purchased the problematic version of the game should delete it from your hard drive and download the corrected version (at no additional charge).

• Sensible World of Soccer – Xbox Live Arcade
• Sensible World of Soccer now available for download – Major Nelson

XBOX LIVE ARCADE UPDATE: SENSIBLE WORLD OF SOCCER TAKEN DOWN

Just a quick note here for any of you who may have logged into Xbox Live looking for Sensible World of Soccer – Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb has advised that due to some technical problems with the game, SWOS has been pulled from the Marketplace temporarily. While the Major advised that everyone is working around the clock to get things right, there is currently no ETA for it's return. 

"This game has been pulled. I’ll post an update when it is available again. In the meantime, if you downloaded this busted version, please delete it and when the new one is available you’ll be able to downloaded it again (at no charge if you purchased it.) While you do that, I’ll go yell at some folks for letting this happen. Apologies and the moment the proper version is available I’ll update this post.

Update: The team is hard at work troubleshooting the problem, but it will take some time. Thanks for your patience.

Update: Ok folks, I am being told that I won't have another update until tomorrow (12/20) mid-day (PT). The teams are working through the night and doing everything they can to get this released as quickly as possible." – Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb, Xbox Live director of programming

On a final note, if you purchased the game before it was pulled, there is no need to stress. As you can see above, according to Major Nelson, you will be able to re-download the fixed version of the game free of charge once it returns.

• Sensible World of Soccer – Xbox Live Arcade
• Arcade: Sensible World of Soccer (Updated) – Major Nelson

XBOX LIVE DOWN FOR MAINTENANCE THIS MORNING

Just a quick note here – according to Xbox Live Director of Programming Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb, Xbox Live (and Xbox.com) will be down for maintenance in the early hours of this morning (11/13) and should be back online some time after 5:00am EST.

"On Tuesday November 13th from 0000-0200 PT our engineering team will be performing server maintenance. 

Specifically, Xbox.com maintenance will begin at 0000 while the Xbox LIVE service maintenance will begin at 0100.

That means you can stay on LIVE until approximately 0100.

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

Both Xbox.com and Xbox LIVE will be available again at 0200.

This is for maintenance only, there will be no new features that will appear on Xbox.com, your dashboard or Xbox Live when we return to service. It’s not time for the dashboard update…yet." – Major Nelson

I'll keep my fingers crossed that everything goes as planned for those of you who happen to have the day off and were hoping to get some online gaming in today.

• Xbox Live Maintenance (11/13) – Major Nelson