Microsoft Offers One Arcade Title after Xbox Live Holiday Problems

by Rob Walker | January 4, 2008 at 07:10 am

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Not that I really expect anything huge from Microsoft, but this is just insulting. Owing to the large amount of issues people were experiencing over the holidays (issues connecting to live in the first place, games were impossible to join, frequent disconnections, etc. for going on two weeks now) there's some word over on bitbag that they might be doing something for customers...unfortunately, it seems their response is to give a free arcade game download.
So users get one arbitrary game (that probably won't be very good, I've enjoyed only two games out of all the arcade titles on offer) in exchange for weeks of connection issues? Sorry if I don't get excited about this.
My xbox 360 has died twice on me due to the infamous 'red ring of death', taking me off xbox live for a good 6-8 weeks each time. I'm paying a monthly fee (around $9 after I buy a year's card), but Microsoft only included one month free when they got my 360 back to me. This is a really poor move on their part, as far as I'm concerned.

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.

Xbox Live users will be compensated for problems experienced with the online service during the holiday season, website Gamespot.com reports.

During late Dec. 2007, instead of enjoying hours of holiday video game goodness and online trash-talking, Xbox Live users suffered frequent and persistent problems, such as difficulties signing on to the service, account recovery problems and inability to participate in multiplayer games-the main perk of the service's Gold membership.

Now Microsoft has said it has been working to fix the difficulties and will compensate its Xbox Live Gold members for the problems.

Xbox Live director of programming Larry Hryb wrote in his blog on Dec. 29 that the "record numbers of new members signing up for Xbox Live and record numbers of players online" contributed to the live service's difficulties.