Xbox Cloud Streaming service outage now resolved

Posted on December 28, 2024

Xbox Cloud Streaming, Microsoft’s cloud gaming service letting subscribers access games on their Xbox, PC or phone without needing to install them locally, has experienced an outage which ultimately lasted for over 24 hours as of the evening of Saturday the 28th of December 2024.

Xbox Support acknowledged the outage on social media, and the official Xbox Support web page stated that resolving the outage is “taking longer than anticipated“. While it has finally been fixed as of about 7pm AEDT, this outage came at a critical time when many gamers would be on holiday after Christmas and be keen to play some games using Microsoft’s advanced Xbox Cloud Streaming service.

Such a lengthy outage also comes inconveniently timed. Microsoft has been pushing Xbox Cloud Streaming to the forefront in its marketing. The company’s recent “This Is An Xbox” marketing campaign positions cloud streaming as the future of the Xbox brand, where gamers can as conveniently access their game library on their mobile device as they can their home console or PC through the power of streaming. Which is all well and good until the servers go down, and you suddenly have no games to play. The disadvantages in terms of latency and reliability were some of the factors which ultimately doomed Google’s Stadia streaming service last year.

There are certainly advantages in terms of convenience to Xbox Cloud Streaming and other game streaming options out there. That said, this outage should serve as a reminder that such a value prospect is reliant on the servers working properly. Everything is only an Xbox when the servers are functioning; otherwise, only an Xbox (and anything else which can actually store and run the games locally) is an Xbox.