Unexplained Xbox Live Outage Lasts Six Hours

Users of Microsoft’s Xbox Live service reported system-wide outages starting around 3:30 p.m. EST. The outage extended beyond game services and affected players’ ability to access cloud games and purchase new games. Microsoft quickly acknowledged the outages on Twitter.

Fans were pleasantly surprised with the company’s transparency during the outage, and equally pleased with the system’s quick return to functioning.

Soon after the initial Xbox Live outage, many people online noticed YouTube outages as well as online games like Call of Duty and the Microsoft-owned Minecraft starting around 5:15 p.m. EST.

All outages cleared up around 9:30 p.m. when a Microsoft rep said through their support page players “should once again be able to sign-in, complete purchases and join chat sessions.”

Mass-outages and vulnerabilities in online systems have a near-infinite potential causes, but the most exciting is espionage. PlayStation users may remember the Christmas of 2014 cyber-attack which fully crippled Sony’s PlayStation Network services. The attacks were so severe and restrictive that Sony gave all users a free month of PlayStation Plus services as an apology.