Xbox Live running normally after spotty holiday service

While Microsoft is not specifically citing any cause, reported issues with the Xbox 360's online Xbox Live service seem to have been resolved as of Wednesday morning.

In all, the problems lasted 12 days, frustrating those who may have unwrapped a new Xbox over the holidays, or even longtime users eager to play the latest game that was found under their Christmas tree this year.

A status message on Xbox's support page reported that Xbox Live was "up and running," without the caveats that had appeared in the week and a half prior.

According to reports and Microsoft itself, users of the Xbox Live service experienced a multitude of problems. Some found that they were having issues "matchmaking" to play games over the service, while others found their statistics were not updating.

In the worst case scenarios, a number of users could not even perform account recovery functions or sign into Xbox Live at all.

"While the service was never completely offline, problems like this are not acceptable," Xbox Live programming director Larry Nelson wrote to his Web log before the new year. "The entire Live team has been working day and night to ensure that you can have a great Live experience."

Sources told AOL blog Joystiq that Microsoft may be planning to compensate Xbox Live Gold users who had problems over the holiday. However, no details as to what the compensation was or when it would appear were available.