Problems with the Xbox Live service during the festive period saw many gamers not only unable to sign into online games, but also experiencing issues recovering their gamertags and even playing single player games that access Live for things such as leaderboards and time uploads.

Sadly, it’s been over a week since the problems started and much of the subscriber base is still locked out of the service, which is hardly going to endear Xbox Live to new Xbox 360 owners. Xbox Live’s director of programming Larry ‘Major Nelson’ Hryb recently apologized for the problems, stating that “things are getting better each hour and that no one on the [Live] team is going anywhere until the job is done.” Gamesblog The Bitbag has claimed that Microsoft is set to compensate enraged subscribers to the service for their downtime, but have refused to say how.