Xbox Live, the service that powers the multiplayer experiences for the Xbox One and Xbox 360, is completely down, and it’s not because of user overload. Instead, a group of hackers is responsible for the service outage millions of people celebrating Christmas are experiencing.
Microsoft’s Xbox Support website is showing that Xbox Live core services are down. Because of this, all the core experiences that you could expect, finding friends, registration and even something as simple as signing in isn’t possible. On online hacking group is claiming responsibility for the issues. PlayStation Network, the online ecosystem for Sony’s PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 consoles, is also being effected by the issue.
When there’s more news about Xbox Live from Microsoft we’ll pass it on. Xbox 360 users should be able to simply unplug console from the network and continue any single player experiences they already started or create new game saves. The Xbox One allows users to stay offline with a toggle in the Settings app under Network. Theoretically, any single player game saves will get synced back to Xbox Live once the service is up.
Some users are reporting that they can’t rent videos or stream music through the Xbox Music and Xbox Video websites and apps for Windows, Windows Phone, iPhone and Android. That makes sense, Xbox Video and Xbox Music are all a part of Xbox Live.
Update: Xbox Live Core services have been restored.