Good morning, happy Monday! Or rather, it is unless you're trying to use a Microsoft service, most notably, Xbox.
I noticed this myself while trying to launch Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 on my PC through Xbox Game Pass, being told that I needed to be online. Except I am online.
And so is everyone else experiencing the issue. A quick search on social media shows a number of similar reports specific to Xbox, with others indicating issues with services such as Teams, Outlook, and even the Microsoft Authenticator app.
Ever reliable crowdsourced information aggregator, Down Detector, shows a similarly bleak story. Spikes for outages are being reported across Xbox, Call of Duty (which is probably the same issue), Minecraft, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365, and even the Microsoft Store.
In the case of Xbox, everyone seems to be reporting the same issue as I'm seeing (and which is embedded in the above image.) The Xbox Network is unable to authenticate games and connect to servers, hinting that either you're not connected to the Internet or that the Xbox Network is down.
I'm fairly comfortable saying it's the latter. The trouble with a server outage is that it usually means even your single-player games are affected, as the console can't verify your 'ownership.'
As of the time of writing, Microsoft hasn't acknowledged the outage nor provided a timeline for a fix. We'll be keeping this post updated with the latest developments.
I should also point out that right now it appears not to be affecting the U.S., though since most folks are asleep over there right now it's hard to be sure. If you're seeing an outage on a Microsoft service somewhere that isn't the UK, do drop into the comments and let us know where you are and what you're seeing.
