Xbox Cloud Gaming along with its related web services have experienced outages in specific regions, but support teams are actively working to resolve the problems.
An outage was first announced through official Xbox communication channels on December 26. Users have indicated that Xbox Cloud Games either fail to launch or disconnect unexpectedly after initiating play. As per Xbox’s Status page, a resolution for the outage was pending, but implementing the fix took “longer than expected.” At the time of writing, players were still experiencing difficulties with Xbox Cloud Gaming and Remote Play services.
The official Xbox Support social media accounts recently conveyed that some players were encountering excessively long wait times when launching cloud games. Support teams mentioned that the games were anticipated to start more quickly than the displayed wait times.
Not all areas with access to the Xbox Cloud Gaming and Remote Play services were experiencing limited functionality during this outage. Yet, Xbox has not explicitly detailed which regions are negatively affected. For instance, Windows Central’s own Jez Corden has reported that the service is operational in his area. Nevertheless, one social media user noted a wait time of 175 minutes while attempting to access Fortnite through Cloud Gaming. Others reported wait times ranging from 220 to 255 minutes. For some, extended wait times only concluded when they faced an unfortunate disconnect, forcing them to try launching the game again and endure long wait times once more.
While Xbox has not commented on the cause of the service disruption, the lengthy queues have been paired with a message stating “Lots of people are playing!” which suggests that servers for Xbox Cloud Gaming might be overwhelmed due to increased holiday traffic. Microsoft launched its “This is an Xbox” marketing initiative to promote cloud gaming on a wider array of devices beyond just consoles right before the holiday shopping rush. With an influx of players logging into Xbox Cloud Gaming via Game Pass on newly acquired devices during the holiday gifting season, the demand on the banks of consoles powering the service in data centers has intensified.
This story is still unfolding…