Preemptive warning: Xbox Live down today for 4 hours

Grab the purified water (for your 360, natch), charge up the batteries (using the Quick Charge kit), and don't forget all the canned goods (for eating, stupid)! Now quickly, to the shelter! It won't be long before it's upon us ... an Xbox Live outage!

The military Major Nelson Xbox Live's Larry Hyrb has issued the following WARNING to all XBL users: "On Tuesday June 27th from 0200-0600 PT Xbox Live will be offline for maintenance. As a result, the 'My Xbox' section of Xbox.com will be unavailable, and the Xbox forums will be in read only mode (you won't be able to post.) The remainder of Xbox.com will be available" maggots.

Oooooooh, shiny new features? The good Major stubs his cigar out in your bright eyes barking, "This is for maintenance, there are no new features that will appear when the service comes back online. This is all for server maintenance...nothing more, nothing less."

Phew, looks like this is only a drill. Guess we'll have to pass the time with a good, old-fashioned game of UNO ... with real cards. It's only a couple hours.

[Update: Ugh, this was supposed to go up last night. As of right now, the outage is over and XBL is back online with -- as promised -- no new features. Consider this a response to the handful of tips we got on the outage then.]