Xbox Live Goes Down

UPDATE, 7/2, 9:01 p.m. ET: Microsoft said it resolved the technical problems that had knocked out Xbox Live for nearly seven hours. “Users should no longer be encountering issues signing in to Xbox Live and services,” the Xbox Support account on X posted at 8:49 p.m. ET. “Thank you for your patience, game on!”

EARLIER:

Xbox Live, Microsoft’s multiplayer gaming and digital media network, was suffering a major outage Tuesday as thousands of users reported problems accessing it.

User-reported problems with Xbox Live began to spike at about 2:15 p.m. ET Tuesday, according to monitoring site Downdetector. As of 2:25 p.m., more than 23,000 outage reports had been logged with the site, with more than three-fourths indicating they were having issues logging in. Some Xbox Live users reported seeing error message saying the service was undergoing “scheduled maintenance.”

Other Microsoft-operated services, including Minecraft and the Microsoft Store, also had a high level of user error reports on Downdetector.

The official Xbox Support account on X posted at 2:55 pm. ET, “We are aware that some users have been disconnected from Xbox Live. We’re investigating!” The message directed users to the Xbox status page — which eventually was updated to say that a major outage of the “Account & profile” service was reported at 2:07 p.m. ET. “You may not be able to sign-in to your Xbox profile, may be disconnected while signed in, or have other related problems,” the message on the Xbox status page said. “Features that require sign-in like most games, apps and social activity won’t be available.”

Microsoft requires users to have an Xbox Live account (which is free to set up) to play games online and access other experiences on the Xbox console, Windows PC and Xbox mobile apps.

Xbox Live users took to social media to vent about the technical problems: