A month after the Playstation Network was shut down by Sony due to a cyber attack, Microsoft is now dealing with problems with its Xbox Live Marketplace for its Xbox 360 console. VG247.com reports that users in the UK cannot see any content in the Xbox Live Marketplace, including the Games On Demand section. We have also confirmed that this issue is affecting US users of Xbox Live Marketplace as well.
In a statement a Microsoft UK spokesperson confirmed, "Users may experience difficulties with the following services: Browsing Indie Games from the Xbox 360 console or Xbox.com, browsing the Games for Windows – LIVE Marketplace on a PC, Browsing Games Marketplace from the Xbox 360 console or Xbox.com". The statement added, "We are aware of the problem and are working to resolve the issue. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience."
The Xbox Live service itself is still up and running and players can still sign on to play Xbox 360 multiplayer games on the service. However there is no word as to why the other services are currently experiencing issues. This is obviously a case of bad timing for this kind of thing to happen as Sony is still trying to recover from the cyber attack that brought down its Playstation Network online service on April 20. Indeed its Playstation Store, which was supposed to come back online on Tuesday, is still down. So far there"s no reason to believe that a similar cyber attack is affecting Microsoft"s Xbox 360 servers.
Update 5:30 pm ET : After several hours of downtime the Xbox Live Marketplace is now back up to speed although there might still be some issues with browsing the Marketplace via the Xbox.com web site. Microsoft has not detailed exactly what went wrong today with the Twitter feed of Microsoft"s Larry Hyrb calling it an "internal operational error"