In a statement to the press released tonight, Marc Whitten, the General Manager of Microsoft's Xbox Live service for the Xbox 360, has apologized for technical issues on the service over the holidays, due to the "massive increase in usage" from new members - and offered an Xbox Live Arcade title for free by way of compensation.
According to comments by Whitten received by Gamasutra, the Xbox Live GM explained the outages on the service as follows:
"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.
A quick look at the floorplans of the 2008 Game Developer Conference reveals that Microsoft and Epic have secured the two biggest floor spaces.
With the largest exhibit at the event, taking up 4,800 square ft of space, Microsoft will certainly have a bigger presence than in previous years, when Sony and Nintendo got the biggest areas to utilize this professionals-only game industry conference as a pre-E3 event.
Only second in size to Microsoft’s space, Epic Games’ presence at the event isn’t surprising at all, since the developer always uses GDC to show the latest Unreal Engine technology.
Furthermore, both companies’ spaces are in front of each other in the first level of the Moscone West Hall. This last detail wouldn’t matter if wasn’t for the fact that the two companies worked closely on Gears of War.
After the listing of Gears of War 2 on Amazon.com and today’s unveiling of "Gears of War: The Pendulum Wars", we are starting to believe that the size and location of Microsoft and Epic Games’ areas at GDC are not just a mere coincidence.
Staff columnist Brier Dudley published an editorial earlier this week in which he speculates the announcements Bill Gates could make in his last CES keynote as chairman of Microsoft.
Dudley said the following regarding the Xbox: Saving the best for last, Gates could end his CES run with a bang by making a blockbuster Xbox announcement.
I've speculated on my blog that Microsoft may be preparing to license the Xbox gaming platform to consumer-electronics companies.
In particular, Microsoft could work with Toshiba to develop a digital video recorder with a hard-drive, high-definition HD-DVD drive and Xbox gaming capabilities. They're already allied against Sony and other backers of the Blu-ray DVD format, and Toshiba could help Xbox finally penetrate the Japanese market.
Microsoft could also make a splash by announcing plans to give the Xbox 360 an internal HD-DVD drive, putting it on par with Sony's PlayStation 3 that has a built-in Blu-ray drive.
I’ve been saying Xbox Live is chock full of weirdos, but this one takes the cake so far. In Saratoga Springs, New York, 20-year old Joshua Stetar met a 15-year old girl, who was living in Spokane, Washington, through playing Halo online over a year ago.
He apparently found her address online and began sending packages and flowers to her home, all of which her parents returned.
He also sent several hundred text messages to her cell phone, which forced her parents to change her number. But he managed to find her new number by “Googling” her and then drove 40 hours straight to her neighborhood. At around 9 pm on Friday, he sent a text message saying that he was driving by her house; her parents in fact saw his car pass by. Then at 9:36, he sent a message reading, “Tell the cops that I’m gonna rape you and your sister.” The girl’s parents called the police, who found Stetar at a nearby motel. After interrogating him, police learned that he had actually visited Spokane earlier and drove by the girl’s house in a rented U-Haul truck, which the girl’s parents were unaware of. He also had apparently been sending numerous text messages to the girl’s cousin, who lives in Billings, Montana, over the summer, until the police called him and told him to stop. He was booked in the Spokane County Jail on one count of felony stalking, but was released on Saturday on bond.
Wow, what a creepy, creepy guy. Let this be a lesson to you kids: Xbox Live is full of freaks and weirdos, so don’t give them your real name or anything. Man, it’s like the new MySpace or something.
We all knew it was just a matter of time, but now we have video evidence. The Wii has been totally haxored! That's right, just check out the video below and take a look at what these guys have accomplished.
In all honestly, about half of what they say is Greek to me, but I'm impressed with the final result nonetheless.
I did catch that they managed to load Linux onto it. All I can say is, "of course they did."
Xbox Live is still borked (we're going on a week now) and It's getting to the point where we expect and accept the service to act unreliably wonky.
But not everyone is willing to be so understanding, as a general cry of dissatisfaction is erupting all across the internets and some are demanding compensation.
Over on the Xbox.com forums, members started a thread about the Xbox Live downtime and are going as far to demand some sort of compensation for the week long disturbance. Compensation either in the form of free Xbox Live, Microsoft points or games. But, as with any civil movement that gains ground, Xbox.com moderators were quick to lock the thread and any others that bring up the subject of compensation (what ever happened to freedom of Xbox Live speech?) So far we've been able to remain level headed and patient about the whole thing, but if our Xbox Live isn't back on its feet soon we just might jump on the compensation bandwagon. We're getting our picket signs ready and have mapped a route to the Xbox Live offices. No payment without service ... or something like that.
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Saving the best for last, Gates could end his CES run with a bang by making a blockbuster Xbox announcement.
