This week marks the fifth anniversary of Xbox LIVE!

When LIVE first launched in November of 2002, things like voice communication, friends lists, and a single name for gamers were new concepts, and tying them all together was absolutely unheard of. One of the problems that I always had as a gamer back in the olden days was knowing what names your friends ended up with for a particular game (curse all of you that have stolen "Malt Liquor" from me!). Now you can easily keep track of your friends to what they're playing, and can have a seamless voice chat without setting up a separate server or installing extra software.

From its humble beginnings of a few of games in two countries, Xbox LIVE now delivers games, TV shows, movies, and music to over 8 million members in 26 countries and in 9 languages. That is huge for only 5 years.

And to top it all off, things are just getting better. First, we're celebrating our anniversary by providing one of my absolute favorite Arcade titles Carcassonne (Hexic 2 in Korea) for free from November 15th at 12:01am PST to November 16th at 11:59 PST. Secondly, we have announced that beginning December 4th, selected original Xbox games will be available for only 1200 points as part of the LIVE update. Some of the first games that will be available are Halo®, Psychonauts™, Crimson Skies®: High Road to Revenge™ and Fable®. And finally, those of you that have been on LIVE with us since 2002 will see 500 MS points credited to your accounts.

The celebration continues over at Xbox.com, so be sure to check out all the festivities they have planned.

If you want more information on LIVE is Five, you can read the full press release here.