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Microsoft fixes problem that rendered Xbox One systems useless

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Les Shu/Digital Trends

Microsoft said it has fixed a problem with Xbox Live that had rendered many users’ Xbox One systems unusable.

The official Xbox Support Twitter account posted the message on Wednesday, January 30, several hours after the issue was discovered, saying it had resolved all problems related to starting consoles, signing in, and title updates.

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The issues surrounding Xbox One console startup, sign-in, title update errors, and our status page have now been resolved. Thank you for sticking with us while our teams addressed these issues and we appreciate the reports. As always, we're here and we're listening.

— Xbox Support (@XboxSupport) January 30, 2019

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Players turning on their systems on Wednesday found that they were unable to even play offline games, such as the new Kingdom Hearts III. Players had also reported completely black screens when turning on their systems, with some completing factory resets before checking online to see if others were experiencing issues. The issue, however, was related to Microsoft’s servers and had nothing to do with the consoles themselves.

Microsoft posted that it had identified the problem a few hours after players began reporting issues. In the United States, many children (and some adults) were home because of a deep freeze throughout the Midwest and were looking forward to spending some time with their games.

Hopefully Microsoft doesn’t run into similar problems when February 1 rolls around as Xbox Live’s Games With Gold program has some fantastic titles to give away for free to subscribers. They include the NES-style action game Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon and Super Bomberman R on Xbox One, as well as Assassin’s Creed Rogue for Xbox 360 and Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy for the original Xbox. As always, all of the games are fully playable on Xbox One, with the latter two also playable on Xbox 360, if yours happens to still be out.

In general, Xbox Live is relatively stable, but this isn’t the first time disruptions have stopped players from being able to play offline games. In the past, issues have kept digital games from being opened, even though are fully paid for and already downloaded on the system. This isn’t supposed to occur since your “home” Xbox is designed to play your library of games even if the internet happens to go out. In an age of reliance on online services, however, it does spell some concern for game ownership in the future.

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Gabe Gurwin
Gabe Gurwin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
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