The Xbox Live outage that lasted for several hours today has now been fixed [Update]

Update: 9:05 pm Eastern time - Microsoft now says it has fixed the Xbox Live Outage that lasted for several hours earlier today. The Xbox Support X account offered no info on what caused the original outage.

Original story - Microsoft is currently dealing with a major issue concerning its Xbox Live online gaming service. After a number of Xbox gamers noted on their social media accounts that they could not sign into Xbox Live, Microsoft's Xbox Status website first posted word that an outage was happening a few hours ago around 2:07 pm Eastern time. The message stated:

You may not be able to sign-in to your Xbox profile, may be disconnected while signed in, or have other related problems. Features that require sign-in like most games, apps and social activity won't be available.

The status page's latest update on the outage was posted at 5:08 pm Eastern time, The message on the post says simply, "We encountered a related issue." There's no word on what this "related issue" is nor is there any word on when this entire Xbox Live outage might be resolved.

Microsoft's Xbox Support account on X has also posted up an update, saying that the company's efforts into checking into this problem "is taking longer than expected." Again, there's no specifics on what is causing the issue.

The timing of this particular issue is not a good one. The July 4th-Independence Day holiday week is currently underway in the US. Lots of people already have some time off to play online multiplayer games on their Xbox consoles. The Xbox Live outage means those gamers won't be able to get in any matches in popular games like the titles in the various Call of Duty games, the Halo titles, and more.

We will update this article when and if we get more information from Microsoft about this Xbox Live outage or if the problem is finally resolved.