Tough Holiday for Xbox Live Gamers

Greetings, all! Nice to be back, and hope you all had a great holiday, full of family, friends, tasty food, cool gifts—and, unfortunately, painfully spotty Xbox Live service.

Starting a few days before Christmas and running though New Year's Day, millions of gamers—many of whom had probably just unwrapped brand-new Xbox 360 consoles—couldn't log onto Xbox Live (or only managed to connect after a lengthy wait). In my case, I couldn't access the Xbox Live Marketplace at all, although I was able to eke out a few multiplayer games on Halo 3; however, many others were locked out of multiplayer gaming altogether, quite the bummer for those hoping for some furious fragging action on Christmas Day. Microsoft engineers were on the case for most of the holiday week, according to Xbox Live's Major Nelson, and while the worst of the storm seems to have past, some users are still complaining of sporadic problems.

So, what happened? There are no definitive answers yet, although it's a safe bet that the rush of new Xbox 360 gamers trying to sign up for Xbox Live Gold accounts had something to do with it. Shouldn't Microsoft have, you know, anticipated the glut of new users? And what about a refund for the days when Xbox Live was down for the count? Again, there's no word yet, but Kotaku is reporting that some kind of compensation is in the offing. I'd sure hope so.

Anyone out there have trouble logging onto Xbox Live over the holiday—and if so, still having problems?

Microsoft To Compensate Customers For LIVE Downtime? [Kotaku]