Xbox shares new message after saying that services are "slowly improving".

A latest post on X at 9.38pm reads: "Xbox incident update — thanks for your continued patience. Our engineers are still working to identify a fix, and we'll share more as soon as we can. Watch here or at http://support.xbox.com for updates."

The previous statement from Xbox read: "XBOX incident update: we apologize for the long-running nature of this issue. Things are slowly improving, though players worldwide may still experience failures launching games, along with potential sign-in and purchase issues."

A post from Xbox on X says that they are focusing on "multiple investigation angles".

It states: "Another update on the game library, sign-in, and game launch issue: our teams are focused on multiple investigation angles and remain hard at work.

"Thanks for your patience while teams keep working — we'll share more details as they become available."

Xbox Support continues to say that it is dealing with outages to four services: account and profile, store and subscriptions, games and gaming, and apps and mobile.

There has been no update on the outage with the website continuing to state that the resolution is "pending".

Gamers using Xbox are frustrated with a second outage after services also went down less than a week ago.

An outage coincided with the early-access launch of Halo: Campaign Evolved on July 23 which prevented some players from accessing the game or other online services.

Those issues were resolved in about two hours but this outage has been considerably longer.

Gamers have faced an Xbox outage today(Image: DOWNDETECTOR)

Xbox has stated that it is aware of problems with four services but has not stated when it expects them to be back to normal.

The support page says the issues are affecting digital and disc-based games on all its consoles, from the latest Xbox Series X and S to the Xbox 360.

It also confirms there are problems with accessing its backward-compatibility features.

While it says that it is working non the problem, there is no timescale for how long this will take.

Gamers around the world have been complaining about Xbox outages.

As well as in the UK there are more than 2,100 people reporting a problem in the United States, while there are also spikes elsewhere in Europe including Germany where 222 people have notified on Downdetector of an issue.

Xbox Support says that there is a problem with access to the Store and also over Subscriptions.

It states: "You might not see a game you're looking for in the Store right now."

And it adds that there is a major outage over seeing games with a resolution "pending".

Many Xbox users are reporting problems(Image: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Xbox says that the problem with signing in has been identified with the solution "pending".

It adds: "You may not be able to sign-in to your Xbox profile, may be disconnected while signed in, or have other related problems.

"Features that require sign-in like most games, apps and social activity won't be available."

Xbox's status page on its website shows four services are facing a "major outage": account and profile, store and subscriptions, games and gaming, and apps and mobile.

One person wrote on X: "I can't access anything, xbox servers are down." Another wrote: "Can’t play my Xbox and no eta on when it will be back up."

A Downdetector map shows a spike of reports this afternoon in outages(Image: DOWNDETECTOR)

Downdetector has recorded 895 reports of issues with Xbox Live as of 4.06pm.

And the map shows a fairly even distribution of cases around the country with the majority as expected in bigger cities.

Map shows areas with most outages reported

Xbox Live has been experiencing issues this afternoon, beginning around 2pm, according to Downdetector reports.

It is the online multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created by Microsoft which lets players connect online, manage profiles, and buy digital games.

Xbox Support says it is aware some users were encountering errors when "attempting to sign in, see your game library or launch games".

In their latest update, it said: "Just checking in on the game library, sign-in, and game launch issue. We know this has been going on a while and appreciate your patience while our teams keep working on it. Watch here or at http://support.xbox.com for updates."