Xbox Live is telling you to walk away from the television set and spend time with your friends and family in the real world this holiday season. At least, that's the message one might infer from the fact that for several hours now, subscribers can connect to the services to browse the Marketplace or use voice chat, but not play games. Apparently even the single-player features of certain Live-aware games, like Gears of War, are being affected, with users suggested to remove the ethernet cable or wireless adapter from their Xboxes and Xbox 360 consoles to fix it.

Major Nelson's blog acknowledges the problem and that the Xbox Live team is working on it.

UPDATE: Some users reported that they can get on XBL now, and Major Nelson's blog has the following update:

I just heard from the Ops team...and we are all set now. They are debriefing now...so I'll see if I can get anything out of e to share on my show this week.

"e" is a member of the XBL team and a sometimes-guest on Nelson's weekly podcast.