Due to the record-breaking increase of people using Xbox Live, the service been suffering server outages, slow access times and sluggish network performance overall.

Microsoft is actively working to remedy the problem, and as a token of appreciation to loyal users of the service, Marc Whitten today wrote in an open letter to the Xbox community that they will be offering a free Xbox Live Arcade game to all Xbox Live members.

It wasn’t specified if the free game will be given only to Gold members, so right now we’ll assume that means even Silver accounts will get the free game. Specific details will be shared in the coming weeks.

An Open Letter from Marc Whitten about Xbox LIVE this Holiday

Dear Xbox LIVE Members:

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.

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.

Thank you again for helping make Xbox LIVE everything that it is today!

Sincerely,

Marc Whitten
General Manager, Xbox LIVE
Gamertag: Notwen

Xbox LIVE Holiday Performance [Major Nelson]

Follow this author on Twitter.