Xbox Live Experiences Almost Seven-Hour Outage

**UPDATE, 7/2, 9:01 p.m. ET:** Microsoft 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, experienced a major outage Tuesday, with thousands of users reporting problems accessing it.

User-reported problems with Xbox Live began to spike around 2:15 p.m. ET Tuesday, according to monitoring site Downdetector. By 2:25 p.m., more than 23,000 outage reports had been logged, with over three-fourths indicating login issues. Some Xbox Live users reported seeing an error message stating the service was undergoing "scheduled maintenance."

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

The official Xbox Support account on X posted at 2:55 p.m. 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 was updated to report a major outage of the "Account & profile" service 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.