Xbox Acknowledges ‘Major Outage’ as Sign-In Issues Hit PC and Consoles
On September 2, 2026, Xbox Live experienced a major outage that prevented users from signing into their accounts across multiple platforms including Xbox Series X/S consoles and Windows PC. The issue began around 1 PM BST and lasted approximately six hours before Microsoft confirmed mitigation.
During the outage, affected users encountered error messages stating “we couldn’t sign you in to Xbox Live” when attempting to log in or create new accounts. This prevented users from accessing their profiles and playing games that require authentication. The outage was confirmed by both the official Xbox Status page and hundreds of user reports across multiple platforms.
Microsoft’s Xbox Support team acknowledged the “major outage” and actively monitored the situation. By late afternoon, the company confirmed that engineering had resolved the issue and that signing in and account creation had returned to normal. The resolution came within approximately six hours of the initial reports.
This outage represents the second significant Xbox service disruption in recent months, following a previous incident in July 2026 that Xbox’s Chief Technology Officer described as “an unacceptable situation.” Despite these recurring issues, Microsoft appeared to respond more quickly to the September incident, successfully restoring services within the same day.
Sources
- Xbox Acknowledges ‘Major Outage’ as Sign-In Issues Hit PC and Consoles
- Is XBOX Down Right Now? September 2 Outage, Explained
- Xbox Live Returns To Normal Following Multi-Hour Server Outage
- The Xbox Network is once again having major outages where users can’t sign in and play games that require profile logins (Update: Fixed)