Xbox Live Outage Forces Gamers Offline During Peak Weekend Hours

The Xbox Live gaming and entertainment platform suffered a major outage for several hours on Saturday, rendering significant elements of the console useless.

Gamers were unable to sign into their accounts so were unable to engage in multiplayer action, or access the suite of entertainment apps that are tied to Xbox Live subscriptions (i.e. Netflix, YouTube, etc.).

In a statement provided to Game Informer, a Microsoft representative informed that the outage was due to routine maintenance. Some individuals had claimed that hacking brought the service down yesterday. But Microsoft assured that this is false.

For the most part, Microsoft has addressed the issue and users are now able to sign in to the service, though some lingering issues remain. For example, Microsoft says users may experience “difficulties” creating new or accessing existing Minecraft game saves, and listening to music via Last.fm is spotty. In both cases, Microsoft says it’s working on a fix.

In the meantime, these problems underscore why gamers take issue with the concept of an always-on console. It’s been rumored that the Xbox 720 (Durango) will feature an always-on Internet requirement, and Microsoft has yet to confirm or deny if the rumors are true. In cases where Microsoft is having problems on its end, an always-on requirement could render the console unusable.

With Xbox Live outages not exactly a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence, where would this leave gamers every time the company has problems with the online portion of its service?

[Game Informer]