On Tuesday afternoon and through Tuesday evening, many Xbox owners were upset to find that they couldn’t sign in to Xbox Live due to a server outage. While a service being down isn’t new in the world of gaming, it’s another case against the always online nature of where we are with it.
This wasn’t a situation where servers for games were down. According to Microsoft’s Xbox status page, the Microsoft store was functional, multiplayer gaming was online, cloud gaming was online, and more. What wasn’t was the ability to sign in to your account. This stopped players from pretty much playing anything they had. That includes single-player games.
Persona 5 Royal, which Twitter user nitpicktim shared a video of, was completely unplayable despite having no need to be connected. It’s a single-player game. Another game that would’ve been unplayable had it been available during this time is Neon White. Yet another title with no need for online. However, because you couldn’t sign in, you were screwed.
Want to play Elden Ring? Nope. Assassin’s Creed? Tough luck.
This may come across as a, sort of, “old man yells at cloud” type of argument, but I’m on the side of the player here. If you own a game – well, license nowadays – and you just want to play it, you should always be able to play it. It’s pretty straight forward.
I’ve said this countless times and I’ll continue to beat this drum. Forcing an online connection to play single-player games is anti-consumer and absolutely ridiculous. I get it for multiplayer games, obviously. But for games that don’t have any benefit aside from patches to be online, what’s the point?
All this does is restrict people who spend their money on your console and on games. We know the days of buying a game, putting it in your system, and just playing it are over. There’s no going back to that. But with how Xbox is currently set, if you lose internet connection or the Xbox servers drop, you’re completely out of luck no matter what. You shouldn’t need the internet to play a game that’s installed locally on your console. It turns your system into a paperweight.
So, why does Microsoft do this? It feels like it’s for no other reason than control. It’s unfair to everyone who you claim are the backbone of your company.
An Xbox on every screen doesn’t mean a thing if you restrict them from playing on said screens.
What are your thoughts on the state of Xbox always being online and not being able to play single-player games during a server outage? For more Insider Gaming, read about the layoffs at Tales of Kenzera: Zau developer Surgent Studios, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for exclusive shows, news, interviews, reviews, and more.
