It was a rough day for Xbox players, as earlier reports indicated that the Xbox multiplayer and store applications are both down. This means that players who may have been itching to play an online multiplayer game like Call of Duty, Fortnite, or Apex Legends on the Xbox may instead be forced to play on a weaker system. While the outage was eventually resolved, it certainly wasn't fun for those players with nowhere else to turn in their prime gaming hours.
Xbox has been riding high after the release of the new Xbox Series X/S during the holiday season of 2020. Microsoft recently celebrated the Xbox Spring sale, offering players gift cards to entice them to participate and pick up some new games. Unfortunately, just a day later, some players who wanted to game with friends were left on the outside looking in.
The Xbox multiplayer and store outages were first reported at approximately 5 PM EST, with Xbox first acknowledging the system-wide issues shortly after. Previously, Xbox had noted that Outriders was having some connection issues, but it did not appear to be a system-wide issue. After beginning their investigation, the bug appeared to spread to other Xbox applications such as cloud gaming before the outage was finally resolved. Within a few hours, though, Xbox had resolved the issue and the systems were all back online.
Many players were hoping that this would be a silly April Fool's joke, but instead, it turns out that there were legitimate issues for those wishing to play with their friends via multiplayer. This was especially tough for players who wanted to get their hands on Outriders, which was enjoying a very successful launch on all systems including Xbox. Although the cause of the outage has not been announced, gamers everywhere are breathing a sigh of relief that the online store and multiplayer system is back online.
Outages are never a fun experience, and it's always painful to be left in the dark while waiting for the company behind the game or service to dissect and repair the problem. Luckily, in this case, the problem did not cause a lengthy outage and has not yet appeared to cause any further disruptions to service. For now, gamers will just have to take this karmic April Fool's joke on the chin, while also thanking Xbox for having such a swift response to the outage.
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Source: Xbox Support/Twitter