Xbox server outages have been causing widespread disruption for gamers across the console’s ecosystem. For the last four days, players on Xbox consoles have been experiencing major issues on the network, with many unable to launch their games at all. The problem hasn’t solely been limited to online gameplay either. Some users have complained that launching offline single-player games that were already in their digital library was impossible too.
The issues, which were first noticed on Friday, came after Microsoft’s Xbox server outage problems caused Xbox to quickly acknowledge things on social media.
While the initial problem appeared to be addressed swiftly, things later deteriorated further, making it possible for players to purchase games once more, but not actually play them. Over the weekend, there’s been lots of turbulence whilst Microsoft has worked to fix the issues. However, after a lot of problems right up until last night, it seems that things will be fully resolved through a new update that Microsoft intend to introduce “in the coming days”.
So while things do seem like they’re finally on the up, the issues aren’t entirely sorted out just yet. Players in some European regions, in particular, are still experiencing problems launching and playing their games. It’s clearly in Microsoft’s best interests to fix this as soon as possible, as the community is getting incredibly frustrated at not even being able to play the games they’ve purchased offline.
Xbox server outages like these do raise questions about the preservation of purchased and playable content in the event of online services being cut off. In addition, the way Xbox currently makes use of its DRM technology has also entered the discourse, with many users on social media and beyond voicing criticism about the way Xbox implements this policy.
Hopefully, the newly proposed update will be rolled out by Microsoft as soon as possible so that gamers can get back to playing their games quickly and with less disruption.
