One of the biggest games of the month, The Outer Worlds 2, is out today. And like any major Xbox title these days, the new game from Obsidian is a day-one release on the Xbox Game Pass subscription service. That means many gamers were hoping to get access to the game when it released today, but unfortunately, things aren’t quite going to plan. Thanks to a widespread outage of Microsoft Azure, many services, including Xbox Game Pass, are currently down.
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Gamers started noticing the issue around noon EDT, which was shortly before The Outer Worlds 2 was set to release. Since around that time, the Xbox Game Pass service isn’t loading for many players, let alone letting them log in. This is affecting both PC Game Pass users and those trying to load the Game Pass page on their Xbox consoles. Here’s what we know so far. As with any big outage, this situation is ongoing.
Microsoft Outage Takes Down Xbox Live & Game Pass
Microsoft began experiencing widespread outages with its Azure cloud and 365 services sometime shortly before noon EDT, according to Down Detector reports. The problem looks to be impacting several services, including the broader Microsoft suite of office services. But for gamers looking forward to the release of The Outer Worlds 2, or anyone hoping to enjoy a multiplayer gaming session, the Xbox outage is the most frustrating.
At around 1 PM EDT, when The Outer Worlds 2 should have gone live on Xbox Game Pass, the official Obsidian account on Bluesky confirmed the outage and its impact on the game’s release. In the thread, the developer confirmed that they are working with Microsoft to resolve the issue.
According to TechRadar, Microsoft has also shared that it is looking into the outage. Supposedly, services should be starting to come back online as of around 1:45 PM EDT. However, that doesn’t yet look to be the case for many hoping to hop onto their Xbox for The Outer Worlds 2. Even the Microsoft support page seems to be down, making it difficult to get good information on when Xbox Live and Xbox Game Pass might return from the outage.
At the time of this writing, trying to load the Xbox Game Pass website doesn’t quite work. The webpage sort of pulls up, but you aren’t able to view any images or access any links. Players on console aren’t able to load the Game Pass page, which means that downloading The Outer Worlds 2 or any other Game Pass titles is currently out of the question. Similarly, those hoping to use Xbox Live to play games like the recently released Battlefield RedSec may be out of luck.
As of now, we don’t have a clear timeline for when Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live services might return. Other games, including Fortnite, are also experiencing issues for those who use Xbox Cloud to access them. Hopefully, Microsoft will be able to resolve the issue and get Xbox gamers up and running again. With any luck, this won’t reach the notorious length of the PSN outage of early 2025.
That said, much like the AWS outage earlier this month, this cloud service going down could have lingering impacts. Any sites and services that use Azure may need to do some reconfiguration on their end, even once the service is back up. With Xbox being directly owned by Microsoft, it’s likely that the team is already hard at work trying to get Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Live services back up.
While many no doubt want to take advantage of their Xbox Game Pass subscription to play The Outer Worlds 2, it is worth noting that it’s a multiplatform release. As of now, Steam does not appear to be impacted by the outage, and the game is available to purchase there for PC. Similarly, the PlayStation store is still up at this time.
Were you hoping to play The Outer Worlds 2 today, or any other games via Game Pass? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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