I was just reading Major Nelson's blog this morning when I noticed a letter from Xbox Live's GM, Marc Whitten.
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.
As you may have heard, or if you are a 360 gamer you probably have experienced the troubles during the holiday week with Xbox Live. Many people were not able to connect at all, and if they were they were unable to connect to online games. Very frustrating especially for people who received new games or an Xbox 360 for Christmas.
While the details of this offer haven't been published yet, it will be interesting to see if XBL gives users a choice of their arcade game, or gives members a limited or single game.
Read the full letter here: Link