Xbox Suffered a Big Outage Last Night

I hope no one was hoping to escape reality for a few hours using Xbox last night because the service experienced an hours-long outage.

“We are aware that users may not be able to sign-in to Xbox Live at this time,” the Xbox team tweeted at about 4:00 pm ET yesterday. “Our teams are currently investigating to fix this issue.”

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After a couple of updates, the Xbox team later tweeted that the issues had been resolved and that the service was back up. That update arrived at about 9:30 pm ET.

On the Xbox Status page, which is now all green, Microsoft labeled the outage as a “Major outage,” and noted that virtually all of its Xbox services, including the Game Streaming (xCloud) feature of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, were down.

I believe this is the first major Xbox outage since the release of the Xbox Series X|S consoles.

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Conversation 17 comments

  • thretosix

    26 February, 2021 - 9:54 am

    <p>It was a crappy situation, glad it was resolved soon enough. Was able to get online and start the Winter season in FH4 last night when I got home from work.</p>

  • christianwilson

    Premium Member
    26 February, 2021 - 10:00 am

    <p>I tried to play last night for the first time in a while and as luck would have it, Xbox Live was down. Oh well. </p>

  • Stokkolm

    26 February, 2021 - 10:16 am

    <p>I'm seeing reports that it was a significant DDoS event.</p>

    • madthinus

      Premium Member
      26 February, 2021 - 11:22 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#615491">In reply to Stokkolm:</a></em></blockquote><p>We need to overhaul DNS. </p>

      • webdev511

        Premium Member
        28 February, 2021 - 10:07 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#615499">In reply to madthinus:</a></em></blockquote><p>All of the protcols designed in the 80's for an open trust driven internet need to be overhauled.</p>

  • Jester

    26 February, 2021 - 11:09 am

    <p>I switched my console to offline mode and wasn't able to play any Gamepass games. I thought as long as your Xbox is set to home console you can play Gamepass and Gold games without being online?</p>

    • IanYates82

      Premium Member
      26 February, 2021 - 5:26 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#615496">In reply to Jester:</a></em></blockquote><p>I have been able to in the past, although it can be hit &amp; miss in that regard. </p>

    • christophercollins

      Premium Member
      27 February, 2021 - 5:32 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#615496">In reply to Jester:</a></em></blockquote><p>Send that in to the XBox team as a bug. To my knowledge, it is supposed to work on your home console.</p><p><br></p><p>They wouldn't turn that off purposefully, because they really want people on GamePass and try hard not to piss the current subs off.</p>

  • jules75

    26 February, 2021 - 11:28 am

    <p>Actually yes, I was hoping to escape reality for a couple of hours last night. My state of the art Xbox Series X is effectively a block of black plastic without Xbox Live. Couldn't play any Game Pass games, and even games that I owned (like COD) would not function.</p><p><br></p><p>I love the Xbox and Xbox Live Platforms, but I do wish I could still use my console if services are down.</p>

    • nadal

      26 February, 2021 - 2:30 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#615500">In reply to jules75:</a></em></blockquote><p>You need to set your console as your home console. Then you can use your games offline.</p>

    • b6gd

      27 February, 2021 - 10:44 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#615500">In reply to jules75:</a></em></blockquote><p>You can play offline for single player games if you disconnect your Xbox from the network. If the network is up but you can't reach Xbox Live then you have the issue you had.</p>

  • rbgaynor

    26 February, 2021 - 3:58 pm

    <p>"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as <strong>if millions of</strong> basement dwellers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced"</p>

    • wosully

      Premium Member
      26 February, 2021 - 9:55 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#615560">In reply to rbgaynor:</a></em></blockquote><p>This ….it's one of the best comments ever made. Ever. Ever!</p>

    • b6gd

      27 February, 2021 - 10:43 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#615560">In reply to rbgaynor:</a></em></blockquote><p>Lol. The outage for me at least happened when I am least likely to get on. It was around the end of the work day, dinner, post dinner activities. By the time I got around to jumping on my XSX, the outage was over.</p>

  • ragingthunder

    27 February, 2021 - 4:45 am

    <p>The irony is real here. Just a couple of days ago Thurrott was heavily preaching cloud gaming.</p>

    • Paul Thurrott

      Premium Member
      27 February, 2021 - 10:46 am

      I don’t think you understand how irony works, but regardless, this is the first major Xbox outage in almost a year.

  • b6gd

    27 February, 2021 - 10:41 am

    <p>With Microsoft's clear focus on a Cloud and Subscription future, these type of outages are never good. </p><p><br></p><p>My team at work manages our O365 and Azure solutions and in 2020 we had a lot of outages, some with multiple week issues. We also manage AWS solutions which never had any issues. </p><p><br></p><p>Sure 2020 was a challenge for many vendors but when you are putting all of your eggs in the cloud basket you need to get it right.</p>

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