Xbox Live is back after a huge outage that took some apps and games offline

Microsoft’s Xbox Live service is experiencing issues today, preventing a large number of users from signing into Xbox consoles. The issues appear to have started around 3PM ET today, with many Xbox users reporting that they were unable to sign in to Xbox One consoles and access some apps and games.

Apps like Spotify, Plex, or Amazon Video require you to be signed into an Xbox One console, and The Verge has been unable to access these apps during this Xbox Live outage. Netflix continues to work, but games like Fortnite and Destiny 2 won’t work correctly without being signed into Xbox Live.

The outage seems to only lasted a couple hours. Around 5PM ET, Microsoft’s Xbox support account tweeted that “Things are looking better with signing in now,” but later reported that group voice chat (aka Party Chat) is still having issues.

Things are looking better with signing in now, so feel free to give it another try! Thank you for sharing all of your reports. As always, we’re here & listening. https://t.co/9jRZAN7Jsn

— Xbox Support (@XboxSupport) August 28, 2019

We’re seeing reports of issues with party chat on Xbox One & our teams are investigating now. We’ll update here & on our status page: https://t.co/kQKp1LYR4o when we have more info to provide.

— Xbox Support (@XboxSupport) August 28, 2019

This is the second time Xbox Live has experienced major issues this year. Back in January the Xbox Live service was down for a couple of hours, causing black screens for many.

Update, 6:02PM ET: Added that Xbox Live sign-ins should be working now, but Party Chat still may not be.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/28/20837338/xbox-live-down-sign-in-issues-apps-and-games