Xbox Live is currently down as thousands of gamers across the UK and US report an outage, with the majority of issues surrounding sign-in, the main Xbox Live service and buying items
Xbox fans are fuming tonight as games are not working and gamers are unable to login in a mass outage that has been going on for hours.
No, it's not just your screen freezing up - Xbox Live is indeed experiencing a major outage. Gamers across the platform are hitting a wall with technical issues this evening, particularly with signing in, leaving countless players unable to dive into their favourite games like Minecraft.
The technical woes kicked off around 8pm and have persisted, marking a significant period of disruption. Down Detector, the online service that tracks outages globally, was inundated with some 30,000 complaints at the peak of tonight's gaming prime time, highlighting the scale of this glitch.
On the Xbox Support subreddit on Reddit, as of close to 1am GMT, it is claimed that the outage has been reduced to partial, but thousands of people still report being unable to use Xbox Live, with many giving up and going to bed. Services seem to be gradually coming back online as more regions are able to access their games.
Over on Twitter, frustrated users have been airing their grievances about the downtime. Ben, an irked Xbox enthusiast, expressed his annoyance: "I think it is incredibly stupid that I cannot play Minecraft because Xbox Live's services are down."
Gregg, another affected player, shared his mid-game calamity: "Was fighting a dragon in Elden ring and got kicked out because the Xbox said the person who bought it needs to sign in, and I can't fix it because Xbox live is down."
And Realz, seeking solidarity, queried: "Is Xbox Live down for anyone else?"
The tide of reports on Down Detector has started to ebb, now showing around 10,000, which could indicate that Microsoft is wrestling back control. However, the issue is far from resolved for many gamers worldwide who remain locked out of Xbox Live.
Microsoft has acknowledged the problems plaguing Xbox users, with their service status page revealing, "You may not be able to sign-in to your Xbox profile, may be disconnected while signed in, or have other related problems. Features that require sign-in like most games, apps and social activity won't be available."
The tech giant also took to Twitter to inform gamers: "We are aware that some users have been disconnected from Xbox Live. We're investigating! Our investigation is taking longer than expected, thank you for your patience and reports! ".
Latest update
As of midnight, the Xbox Support page and Xbox Status page still show the gaming service as suffering from an outage.
But some gaming fans have begun to be able to use the service, according to reports. This indicates that Xbox is gradually beginning to regain partial service, at least inthe US, but there is no word as to the timeline of when all users will see their services back up and running.
Latest update reports from the Xbox Support subreddit on Reddit:
00:58 Service Improvement - More regions are able to access services. Gradually, services seem to be coming back online.
00:36 Service Improvement - Access in South East England (Reddit user has been able to sign-in and play on a Realm in Minecraft)
00:28 Service Degradation - Users report losing access to services after being online temporarily.
00:22 Service Improvement - Number of regions able to access services continues to increase. Incident is still flagged as a major outage on Xbox Support, but due to the amount of users claiming access to services I have put here Partial.
00:06 Service Improvement - Many parts of the US are now experiencing access to services.
23:40 Service Improvement - Some regions are now PARTIALLY UP
23:23 Service Improvement - Users continue to report service availability. Multiple sources indicate that users are able to partially access Xbox Live Services in certain regions (although unknown).
23:18 Service Improvement - Sign-in now mostly online. Xbox app and console users are able to sign in in most cases, however individual games which utilise Xbox Live services and the Xbox Store still remain disconnected.
22:49 Service Improvement - Some users are able to sign in.
22:42 Xbox have commented that the issue is taking longer than anticipated to fix. This further brings back the ETR.
