Xbox Live is Currently Down for Some Users
UPDATE: The issues have been fixed by Microsoft. You can continue reading the original story below.
Xbox Live is currently experiencing issues for some players, preventing key features from being accessed. Twitter users began reporting issues with the service in the afternoon on May 6th, 2022, while others reported they weren't experiencing any at all. Twitter user RayvenVincent noted that their Xbox was working just fine, but their husband was unable to play games like Halo. Xbox confirmed these online reports on its official support page, citing "major outages" with three services: Store and subscriptions, Cloud gaming and remote play, and Games and gaming. More specifically, the page notes that players are experiencing issues buying and playing their downloaded games and given that's one of the biggest ways people acquire games now, this is likely affecting a large group of people.
An outage was reported around 4PM eastern time and the support team stated it was working on the issue at around 6PM eastern time. The issues aren't insignificant, but some players are able to carry on as normal with many players playing single player games and participating in Xbox Live parties. Noentheless, some are not as lucky and are stuck staring at the dashboard of their Xbox until the issue is resolved. As of right now, it's unclear when the problems will be resolved. In the meantime, players should be able to join parties, watch movies, and play multiplayer in games that they are able to launch. We'll keep you posted on when the issue is resolved.
Xbox Live and PlayStation Network go down rather frequently, something that has become more annoying as time has gone on. As gamers have shifted away from physical media and embraced the convenience of digital, almost always online services like Xbox Live, any disruption is costly. With this latest outage knocking out people's abilities to even play the games they own, it highlights a growing issue and long-held fear about the future of gaming and the ability to easily access games that people own.
Have you experienced any issues with Xbox Live? Let me know in the comments below or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.