Gaming enthusiasts have patronized Xbox Live, an online multiplayer gaming service, for many years. Created by Microsoft and released on November 2002, Xbox Live has evolved over the years with updates that made it compatible to newer Xbox models like the Xbox One and Xbox 360.
But last January 12, 2019, several gamers reported issues with accessing Xbox Live and not long after, the gaming community was already abuzz with the Xbox Live down news that especially affected Xbox One and Xbox 360 users.
Gamers experienced difficulties in logging in, playing online, accessing friends list and using party chat. This isn’t the first time for Microsoft, however, although Xbox Live has been pretty stable after the Lizard Squad attack in Christmas 2014. So, what really happened and how did Microsoft act on the problem?
The Xbox Support team quickly jumped into the issue
A few minutes after news about the outage started pouring in on social media, especially Twitter, the Xbox Support team tweeted: “If you’re running into issues with party chat, joining your friends online and signing in, or trying to view profiles, our teams are aware and on the case. We’ll be sure to provide updates here when we have more to share.”
This was to inform the gaming public that the developers know of this issue and are looking at it closely. An hour later, the Xbox Support team tweeted that the problem is still being checked and that more updates will be released once the issues are resolved. A list of problems identified by the team was also posted on the Xbox Live Service Status Page.
Outages have happened in the past
The team at Xbox Live isn’t a stranger to outages like the one that happened on January 12. In fact, several outages have been experienced over the last few years, but they were quickly resolved and lasted for only a few hours.
The problem was fixed and all services have been restored
With some of the best engineers working on the issue, it wasn’t long until the problem with Xbox Live was resolved. In a tweet on the morning of January 13, 2019, the Xbox Support team said: “Good news, everyone! The issues previously listed in our last few posts have now been mitigated, so feel free to give those another try. Thank you for reporting the issue, we’re here and we’re listening.”
The Bottomline
Xbox Support did not release any statement on the cause of the outage, but gamers are thankful for the team’s quick response in fixing the issue.
Social media also played an important role in resolving the outage, as the support team was quickly made aware of the problem through conversations that started circulating on Twitter and other social media platforms about the difficulties in accessing some of Xbox Live’s features.
When the next outage could happen, no one knows for sure. But what gamers can guarantee is that the team at Xbox is always ready to jump into the problem and find solutions in the soonest time possible.