On December 26, Microsoft confirmed that its Game Pass cloud streaming platform wasn’t working as expected. Over 24 hours later, many players are still complaining about long waits and disconnects. This outage comes at a time when Microsoft has been pushing a new marketing slogan that claims everything connected to the internet is an Xbox.
As reported by Engadget, starting around 12:00 p.m. ET on Thursday, users began complaining of long waits and disconnects when trying to play games via Xbox’s cloud streaming service. This option is available to Game Pass Ultimate subscribers and lets them play a large library of games across multiple devices, including tablets, phones, and TVs. However, as of 4:30 p.m. ET today, Xbox doesn’t seem to have a timetable for when streaming will be back up and running for everyone.
On December 26, about an hour after the outage started, Xbox support tweeted out that the company was “aware” that “users may be experiencing issues launching Cloud Gaming titles.” The account told people to check on the official Xbox status page for updates. Since then, things haven’t improved much.
On December 27 at 10 a.m. ET, the company posted a follow-up claiming that users might see a long wait time displayed when launching a game on the cloud, but that this wait time wasn’t accurate. However, checking the comments on the post and elsewhere, it still seems like people can’t even connect and play games on their phones or other devices. As of 3:30 p.m. ET, the Xbox support page states: “We’re close to resolving the issue.”
I expect the issue will be resolved, likely a few hours after this post goes live (or sooner). But the timing couldn’t be worse.
This holiday season, Xbox really pushed the idea that its cloud streaming option could replace a console. You didn’t need an Xbox if you were a Game Pass subscriber with phone or a smart TV. You could just stream all those games instantly. And as a result, I imagine that this Christmas season saw a lot of kids and teens get Game Pass subs so they can stream games without their parents having to buy a pricey Xbox.
A lot of people are probably experiencing cloud streaming for the first time this holiday season and, well, this outage is a very blunt reminder that while you can stream games on your phone, it ain’t an Xbox. An Xbox can work without an internet connection, and it can play your games offline. A phone can’t. Maybe Xbox should make that more clear in all those cute ads promoting every device as an Xbox?
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