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Surprise: Xbox Live crashes amid Titanfall launch [updated]

Updated Mar 12th, 2014 5:25PM EDT
Xbox Live Titanfall Crash

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Titanfall is one of the year’s most anticipated games and it’s been getting rave reviews so far that say it’s lived up to the hype. However, the launch of Titanfall coincided with the crash on Xbox Live for many users, a fact that Microsoft Xbox Live programming director Larry Hryb acknowledged on his Twitter feed on Tuesday evening. Specifically, Hryb said that Microsoft was working to fix issues that were preventing many gamers from signing into Xbox Live although he insisted that “this is not a Titanfall issue.”

If the problems Xbox Live experienced Tuesday were unrelated to Titanfall, then that’s a pretty big coincidence: The game was widely expected to push Xbox Live to its limits since it’s an incredibly popular online-only game that was generating huge spikes in data center traffic within hours of its launch. All the same, Microsoft was very quick to get on top of this problem and now Xbox Live’s status page shows that everything is running smoothly again.

For the time being, it looks like troubles logging into Xbox Live amid the Titanfall launch were just part of the regular hiccups that come with releasing a major new title and were not a SimCity-level disaster.

UPDATE: A Microsoft spokesperson checks in with the following statement: “Microsoft is investigating an issue that may interrupt customer access to some Microsoft online services. This is unrelated to the launch of ‘Titanfall and the Xbox Live service is up and running. The issue on Xbox is resolved, but unfortunately a small percentage of Xbox One owners may still experience a sign-in issue on Xbox Live, which can be fixed with a cold reboot of the Xbox One by powering down, unplugging, waiting 10 seconds, plugging back in and powering back on. The Xbox team sincerely apologizes for the interruption.”

Brad Reed
Brad Reed Staff Writer

Brad Reed has written about technology for over eight years at BGR.com and Network World. Prior to that, he wrote freelance stories for political publications such as AlterNet and the American Prospect. He has a Master's Degree in Business and Economics Journalism from Boston University.