Users of several online services, particularly Xbox Live, reported significant outages Thursday. Xbox Live support said multiplayer gaming, cloud gaming, user sign-in and the ability to purchase games were all affected. The outage had reached almost five hours Thursday night and was continuing.
"We are aware that users may not be able to sign-in to Xbox Live at this time. Our teams are currently investigating to fix this issue," the Xbox Support Twitter account announced. "We will update here and on http://xbox.com/status when we have more information to share!"
Twitter users were also trending the hashtag #YouTubeDown as many reported difficulty accessing that platform.
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Downdetector.com, which tracks user-reported outages, first showed signs of the Xbox Live problem at about 3:30 p.m. EST and continued until about 9:30 p.m. when Xbox support said users "should once again be able to sign-in, complete purchases and join chat sessions."
There were also outage spikes reported for Call of Duty, Minecraft and other popular gaming platforms, though not to the extent of the Xbox Live outage.
A YouTube outage spike was also noticed at about 5:15 p.m. EST, but quickly showed signs of being resolved.