Microsoft’s Xbox Live service has gone offline for the second time in a week. This is due to an increased demand stemming from Coronavirus-related self-quarantining. The rapid, widespread pandemic has challenged the infrastructure of many nations and companies, Xbox Live the latest service to falter under a surge of players.

Microsoft’s executive vice-president of Gaming, Phil Spencer, has confirmed that the outage is a result of widespread increased usage, and that operations and IT teams are working hard to maintain smooth operation. Around the world, people are being told to self-quarantine due to the spread of the highly infectious Coronavirus, or Covid-19, leading to a wave of people with a lot of time to fill with online play.

RELATED: Coronavirus Quarantine Could Provide A Boost To Content Creators

The service was down for several hours, from roughly 4:30 to 7:30 PM EST yesterday. Along with players being unable to log in and make use of online gaming, support services also experienced downtime, compounding the issue and its surrounding confusion. Xbox Support has since announced that online play is now fully functional once more, news which will please many.

Among the many consequences of Covid-19’s worldwide spread, Xbox Live downtime is one of the least significant ramifications. However, it has likely caused acute frustration for players shut in and attempting to stave off boredom – temporarily unable to wile away the hours in recent connectivity-based releases such as Call of Duty: Warzone

Having had the fastest-growing non-mobile game launch of all time, Warzone’s growth will have been hindered by these outages. With their apparent resolution, the surge of socially-quarantined players will continue to propel its popularity. We have given our thoughts on the title – providing a comparison to its mobile counterpart, considering how it stacks up to other battle royale titles, and explaining how to acquire the game to fight off boredom in self-isolation.

While Xbox Support have stated that players will now be able to make use of Xbox Live normally, and services seem to be functional as of now, they have recently acknowledged issues with "Looking for Group" services, suggesting that it is not smooth sailing just yet. Updates on availability issues can be found at the official Xbox Live Status site and Downdetector.

Source: Xbox Support

NEXT: Modern Warfare 2 Remastered Revealed In Another Leak