Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Microsoft makes tweaks to Xbox Live and Teams to handle spike in demand

Georgina Torbet
By

Microsoft is adjusting its cloud services to manage the huge surge in demand caused by the pandemic of coronavirus, officially called COVID-19. Microsoft Azure, the company’s cloud computing service, has been under tremendous strain in the last few weeks as people all over the globe switch to remote work and turn to gaming for entertainment at home.

Last week, Microsoft announced it would be monitoring performance and usage trends to anticipate increased demand for its services, and set out criteria for deciding what services should be a top priority (for example, that first responders, medical supply management, and emergency applications be prioritized).

Recommended Videos

This week, the company has released the first results of the monitoring of usage, and unsurprisingly, there’s been a massive spike. “We have seen a 775% increase of our cloud services in regions that have enforced social distancing or shelter in place orders,” Microsoft shared in a blog post. In addition, “We have seen a very significant spike in Teams usage and now have more than 44 million daily users. Those users generated over 900 million meeting and calling minutes on Teams daily in a single week.” The company also shared that the use of Windows Virtual Desktop has grown by more than three times.

Related

To manage this demand, Microsoft is making some small changes to some of its services including Xbox Live. “To streamline moderation and ensure the best experience for our community, we’re making small adjustments,” an Xbox support notification highlighted by The Verge reads. “We’ve temporarily turned off the ability to upload custom gamerpics, club pics, and club backgrounds.” Microsoft has also said that it is taking “proactive steps” to prepare for periods of high usage and by pushing bandwidth-heavy actions like game updates into off-peak hours.

The Teams service will be tweaked as well. “We made a few temporary adjustments to select non-essential capabilities such as how often we check for user presence, the interval in which we show when the other party is typing, and video resolution,” the blog post said. “These adjustments do not have significant impact on our end users’ daily experiences.”

These small changes shouldn’t make much of an impact on users, but they will hopefully allow Azure services to remain active to meet all of the increased demand they face.

Update 04/01/2020: Microsoft has clarified that the 775% increase in service use was in Teams calling in Italy specifically, where a shelter in place order has been enforced.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Georgina Torbet
Georgina Torbet
Space Writer
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
Online learning can’t replace classrooms. Microsoft Teams wants to change that
learning at home

The school year in the United States came to a close recently, and it was anything but ordinary. For most school districts, it was a dash to quickly get up and running with the right technology to support online learning. Meanwhile, at home, millions of students had to deal with the personal challenges that come with the new normal of remote learning.

Microsoft has seen heaps of success with its Teams collaboration service, but mostly in the corporate space. But today, Microsoft announced a number of Teams features tied to remote learning, specifically in the area of student engagement. I had a chance to preview these new features and chat with Microsoft about how it wants to transform the future of online learning.
New features support the digital transformation

Read more
Microsoft’s Xbox Series X console could power xCloud servers next year
Project xCloud running on Android phone

Microsoft will use its upcoming Xbox Series X console to power xCloud servers, according to a new report.

When Microsoft launches its xCloud game-streaming service later this year, it'll rely on the Xbox One S to power the platform. But sometime next year, Microsoft plans to replace the Xbox One S with the Xbox Series X, providing improved graphics and performance for the company's streaming service, The Verge is reporting, citing people who claim to have knowledge of its plans. The Xbox Series X is scheduled to launch in time for the 2020 holiday shopping season.

Read more
What is Microsoft Teams? A look into Microsoft’s collaboration platform
A close-up of someone using Microsoft Teams on a laptop for a videoconference.

Online team collaboration is the new norm as companies spread their workforce across the globe. Gone are the days of primarily relying on group emails, as teams can now work together in real time using an instant chat-style interface, no matter where they are.

Microsoft Teams is one of many collaboration tools designed to bring company workers together in an online space. It’s not designed for communicating with family and friends, but instead provides a platform for video conferencing, real-time discussions, document sharing and editing, and more for companies and corporations.

Read more