Xbox Live

So for the past week or so this has been my 360 gaming experience:

 

- I sign into my Profile and it takes 20 seconds for the "Xbox Live" Blade to show anything at all

 

- I go to the Marketplace and select an item and it takes 20 seconds for anything to show (if at all, sometimes I just get an error message)

 

- I pull up a friend's profile and it is blank for about 20 seconds (no gamerscore, rep stars, previously played games)

 

- I send aa voice message to a friend and it takes 20 seconds to go through

 

- I press the Guide Button in the middle of a game to see what achievement I just finished unlocking and my 360 freezes for half a minute

 

- I try to get into a match of CoD4 and I spend 5 minutes getting into and out of lobbies because they all fail.  I finally find one that loads, play one match, then that lobby fails

 

- I invite a friend to be in my Party in CoD4, spend 5 minutes finding a match that works, and when I finally find one, I join the match by my friend gets disconnected for whatever reason.

 

Not fun in anyway.

 

Microsoft released a statement today apologizing for the problems, claiming that so many new people subscribed to Live over the holidays that the servers went to shit.  The statement sounded like they were more proud of the fact that they have so many new subscribers than they were sorry for the problems it has caused.  They are going to be offering a free Live Arcade game to make peace.  Nice gesture, for sure, but I just want Live to work properly again!

 

And of course this has been happening ever since I got really addicted to CoD 4 multiplayer.  I've had the game since it was released but have been too busy with others games to really jump into the multiplayer (and I knew I would get addicted because I was pretty hooked on the beta).  Just when I start to play it on a regular basis, Live dies.  Nice!

 

Hopefully it will be back to normal soon.