Hulu and Xbox Live service came back online after going down for several hours on Wednesday afternoon.
Users began to complain that the platforms were down beginning at 1:45 p.m. PT. As of 4:30 p.m. PT, Hulu service appeared to be restored for most users. Xbox Live service began to come back around 4:45 p.m. PT, according to Xbox support.
“We’re seeing improvement with signing into accounts on Xbox 360, Xbox One & the Xbox App, so feel free to give it another try!,” the Xbox support account tweeted.
According to Down Detector, there were more than 10,000 reports of issues connected to Xbox Live, as well as more than 10,000 instances of problems with Hulu. People were also reporting issues with Reddit earlier, but it appears that website is up and running again. The outage map on Down Detector shows that the Hulu and Xbox Live outages were only affecting the U.S.
Xbox Live support said earlier that the issue seemed mainly affect users trying to sign into Xbox One, Xbox 360 and Xbox on Windows 10.
We've caught your reports of sign-in errors on Xbox One and have sent this over to our engineering teams. We will update everyone here when we have information to share. Thank you for reporting.
— Xbox Support (@XboxSupport) June 19, 2019
As per usual, angry users hoping to play video games or watch their favorite shows took to Twitter to complain. Hulu also seems to be aware of the problem, responding to tweets that it is working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
It didn’t take long for PlayStation users to brag that their console of choice was working — or for Xbox players to joke about running for a PS4.
Playstation players when they seen Xbox Live is down 😂 pic.twitter.com/mgWPs6Xa7z
— XO⚡️Vibe (@XOVibes2) June 19, 2019
https://twitter.com/philthrill94/status/1141457640654086145
There seems to be no apparent correlation between the two platforms being down, except that you can access the Hulu app via your Xbox device.
Google Calendar was down for several hours on Tuesday and both Instagram and the PlayStation Network went offline on Thursday, so it has been a frustrating week for tech and social media users. The recent spate of outages could be a bad omen for the cloud-focused future of gaming. If a cloud-based gaming platform like Google’s Stadia went completely offline, it wouldn’t just stop you from playing with your friends — it could stop you from playing games at all.
The timing on this outage was bad for Hulu fans as well: the fifth episode of The Handmaid’s Tale‘s third season premieres Wednesday evening. With service restored, there should be few issues watching the new episode.
