It appears Xbox Live was down for gamers across the globe late Tuesday. The service, which allows online play, and access to a catalog of movies, television, and games to purchase, was offline for some time, to the point that Twitter accounts belonging to popular online-only games reported on the issue:

PSA: Xbox Live is currently down, which may impact Key and Car Purchases in Rocket League. Head to https://t.co/mpqjJwtdRf for more info. — Rocket League (@RocketLeague) October 10, 2017

⚠️Xbox Live is currently experiencing a service interruption. Please check here for status updates: https://t.co/f4coUA1cSe — Bethesda Support (@BethesdaSupport) October 10, 2017

Xbox Support tweeted the issue ttoo, and also drew attention to the fact the Xbox website was down as well – though Xbox.com returned to functionality as of 6:37pm Central Standard Time:

We've got the proper teams investigating sign-in issues across Xbox One consoles & our website. We'll provide more info when we have it! — Xbox Support (@XboxSupport) October 10, 2017

Initially thought of as a Destiny specific problem,it’s clear now it was more of a global issue.

The Xbox Live Status for ‘Core Services’ and ‘Purchase and Content Usage’ had alerts citing them as ‘limited’…which meant Xbox Live was down. The issue was affecting Xbox One, Xbox 360, Windows 10, and Mobile devices that utilize the network.

However – you *could* access in-game servers for many games, including Madden. The outage was not affecting match-making, cloud services, or games that require connectivity, though the initial lack of Xbox Live functionality may have lead a player to think otherwise.

Xbox live is down and beginning to wonder if I should buy a PS4 #xboxlive pic.twitter.com/paPv3GZvM9 — Matt Blanke (@MBBlanke) October 10, 2017

With online functionality being such a huge aspect of console gameplay, the outage is frustrating. There was a similar outage during the Madden launch in August.

https://twitter.com/MyNameIsNotBro/status/917894607924551682

Normally, there’s a status update webpage for Xbox via Microsoft, but as the Xbox.com was down at the time of initial outage, gamers were relying on the Xbox Support Twitter Account. Thankfully the website resumed functionality, although the status update website fluctuated in-and-out of availability.

As a curious note, ‘Alien Paradox’ seemed to suggest they took responsibility for the outage, though their lack of followers (and functioning website) seemed to dissuade that notion:

https://twitter.com/AlienParadoxHQ/status/917892670684581894

As more games move toward online-focused gameplay, be it Elder Scrolls Online, Rocket League, Madden Ultimate Team, or Destiny 2, it’s becoming apparent that network stability will be a major pain point for gamers who are accustomed to playing what they want, when they want. The notion of being locked out of services due to back-end issues for the second extended period of time in 2 months, will surely leave gamers with idle thumbs with a sour taste in their mouth.