Microsoft’s Xbox Live online service has been causing gamers consternation since the end-of-year holidays: folks have intermittently been unable to log on, purchase games or other content, buy or redeem Microsoft Points—even match-making transactions for Call of Duty 4 have been unreliable. Microsoft says it has been working on the problems, but improvements have been slow in coming—so much so that rumors have begun circulating that Xbox Live has been subjected to some sort of denial-of-service attack.
Although Microsoft hasn’t reveled the cause of the problems, the basic sense among industry watchers is that the service has simply been overburdened, and Microsoft has been slow to ramp up its capabilities. Microsoft claims the end-of-year holidays say the largest number of new Xbox Live members in the service’s history, and January 2 marked the largest number of concurrent users ever on the service.
Nonetheless, by way of apology for Xbox Live service problems, Microsoft plans to offer all Xbox Live Gold and Silver members a free title from Xbox Live Arcade. Xbox Live’s general manager Marc Whitten wrote in an official statement: “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.” Microsoft says the details will be available in “coming weeks,” so it’s not known whether users will be able to choose from a selection of Xbox Live Arcade games, whether the offer will be restricted to just one game, or what the Microsoft Point value of the game might be. But Xbox Live users will be happy to know they’ll get something for the inconvenience of the outages…assuming they’re able to get back onto the service.
