Congrats Microsoft, you had a great Q4. Between Bioshock, Assasin's Creed, Call of Duty 4, Halo 3 and Mass Effect it appears that everyone and their mom got a Xbox 360 for Christmas. And, with each new 360 comes a free trial to Xbox Live Gold. If Microsoft needed proof that their Live service hit its stride in '07, they need to look no further than the multitude of issues that have brought the service to its knees in the past two weeks.

As I type this post, I'm trying to access Major Nelson's Xbox Live blog that has a continual status update. Apparently things are so bad right now worldwide that Microsoft is also having issues with their servers for the web -- the Major Nelson blog won't even load. Sure seems strange for Microsoft, no? I guess that's what happens when everyone goes on Christmas vacation.

Earlier today, when I was still able to access the site, Major Nelson said Microsoft is entirely aware of the issues and "that things are getting better each hour and that no one on the team is going anywhere until the job is done." Really? They're getting better each hour? Slow sign-times, total disconnects and getting booted from games online isn't what I would call "getting better." Here's the full update:

"You may have noticed that the LIVE service has been having a few issues over the past few days. This includes things like signing in, matchmaking and account recovery. Not everyone has had problems, but I know some of you have and I wanted to give you and update. While the service was never completely offline, problems like this are not acceptable. The entire LIVE team has been working day and night to ensure that you can have a great LIVE experience. While we’re not done yet, I wanted to let you know that things are getting better each hour and that no one on the team is going anywhere until the job is done. Thanks for your patience."

One of the reasons that people enjoy Xbox Live is that it's fast and reliable -- hardly how I would describe the service today -- when millions are home from school and work and want to play. The strangest thing is that Microsoft has to know the extent of Live's server capacity. So, either things were planned poorly for the Q4 Live onslaught, or something else went wrong entirely. Personally, I'm willing to be patient and will not pass final judgment on the service's issues unless they continue to escalate.