Xbox experienced a significant outage that prevented players from accessing games and core online features for over 12 hours. The issues began during the advanced access launch of Halo: Campaign Evolved, impacting account logins, game downloads, the Xbox Store, subscriptions, and app launches on both console and mobile.

Reportedly, even the recently introduced Xbox Backwards Compatibility feature was affected. Microsoft acknowledged the problems and stated they were working on a fix. This outage follows a similar server issue experienced by PlayStation just days earlier.

The prolonged downtime occurred shortly after PlayStation announced plans to cease physical game media production by 2028, with expectations that Xbox will follow suit. This shift towards digital-only distribution raises concerns about game ownership and the reliance on platform services like Xbox Live for access and functionality.