Xbox Servers Down For Second Time In A Week

3 days ago 12

halo Master Chief Concpet art in front of Giant Forerunner

Published Jul 27, 2026, 11:39 AM EDT

Chris is a Gaming Editor at ScreenRant. He has been a professional writer since 2009, and has written for top TV, comics, movie, and video game outlets like Engadget, Polygon, Destructoid, and more. He brings with him an expertise in every game genre, no matter how niche or mainstream.

You may know him as the former Managing/Reviews Editor of Destructoid, where he published hundreds of game reviews across every genre, including MMOs, sports games, and Metroidvanias.

Find Chris on Twitter @_SRChris.

It looks like there are more issues at Xbox this week, as the company is reporting that its servers are down for the second time in a week. Following a disturbance with Xbox's online service last Thursday (when nearly everything at Microsoft went down, including Outlook and Teams), it was cut out again.

As Microsoft reports on its own Xbox Status page, nearly every major facet of Xbox is down. That includes accounts and profiles, the store and subscription access, all games and gaming servers, and the app. While Microsoft is aiming to resolve this issue today, multiple services are still down.

At the moment, Microsoft notes that you "may have problems playing your digital games right now," and "you might not see a game you're looking for in the Store right now." The outage was reported late last night, and while it took Microsoft nearly 12 hours to identify the issue, they're working on a resolution as we speak.

Here is the latest update from the company: "We are aware that some users are encountering errors when attempting to sign in, see your game library, or launch games. Our engineers are actively working to mitigate the issue." In terms of Xbox accounts: "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."

This comes at a generally bad time, given that this is the launch of Halo: Campaign Evolved, one of the more significant games Microsoft is releasing this year. As a remake of the original Halo: Combat Evolved with full support for online co-op play, this is the kind of game people are taking off work for.

Image of all 6 of the new xbox controllers lined up, inclduing blue, red, green. pink., light blue and purple.

Many users are reporting problems launching games from physical discs that require authentication, which Microsoft needs to address immediately. While games that don't require that aspect or any patches can be launched fully offline (even if you were able to unplug and test it while services were technically operational), a lot of modern titles don't have that convenience.

It's part of the reason so many people fear the loss of physical media. As Sony moves into an uncertain disc-less future in 2028, everyone is wondering what the strategy over at Xbox will be. Will Project Helix follow suit and not include support for physical media? Or will Microsoft try to capitalize on Sony's loss?