You might have noticed that Microsoft has suspended the Xbox 360 Sky Player service. Apparently it’s all down to an “unforeseen technical issue”. Whatever the case, it’s not what you’d call an auspicious start...

The Sky Player launched on Xbox LIVE yesterday morning, and even worked properly for a short while. A very short while, as it turned out. For no sooner had the rush to subscribe commenced when the wheels began to wobble; eventually falling off altogether soon afterwards. And here we are this morning, still totally Sky-less.

Microsoft hasn’t specified what the technical issue is that caused this shameful outage – we’d wager that it’s a case of demand outstripping the ability to supply. However the situation is all in hand, as the Xbox.com technical support page reassures us:

“We would like to take this opportunity to apologise to our customers who have attempted to access the service today. Sky Player engineers are hard at work to resolve the problem - we expect to have the full service available tomorrow.”

That message was posted late yesterday, so “tomorrow” actually means today. Sadly it doesn’t mean right now – at the time of writing the Sky Player was still nowhere to be seen. But fingers crossed that MS engineers find the right combination of elastic bands and paperclips to get things up and running later on this morning.