All online services go down occasionally, whether it's due to server overload, DDoS attacks, unexplained technical issues, scheduled maintenance, or some other reason entirely. Online gaming services like Xbox Live and PlayStation Network are certainly no exception to that rule, with both services occasionally going down, limiting what users can do with their consoles for a short period of time. Xbox Live and PSN outages are typically fixed straightaway, but some may still be curious to find out which service is more reliable.

ToolTester has conducted a study analyzing popular websites and how often they had outages in the past 12 months. According to the data collected by ToolTester, Xbox Live services went down 63 times in the past 12 months, with online gaming impacted 65% of the time. Meanwhile, PSN went down 49 times within the same time period, with the most common issue being people unable to sign in.

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ToolTester took a look at a variety of other sites and services as well, including Steam. According to ToolTester, Steam suffered more outages than both Xbox Live and PSN, with 99 outages within the last 12 months. ToolTester pointed out that one of Steam's worst outages was when Cyberpunk 2077 launched, which caused a flood of traffic that in turn made Steam crash.

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Other gaming-related services were also examined by ToolTester, including Discord. Discord is a communication app that, while not exclusively used for gaming, is closely tied to the industry and in fact had its origins as a way for gamers to communicate while playing PC games. In any case, Discord trumped PSN, Xbox Live, and Steam when it came to total number of outages in the last 12 months, with 129 outages reported.

ToolTester's data comes mainly from the Down Detector website, which is a site that users can use to report outages. Whenever a significant number of people report an outage, a spike in complaints can be seen on the Down Detector site, though it must be stressed that not all outages are created equal. Some Xbox Live and PSN outages may only impact a certain region, whereas other outages may be causing troubles for everyone trying to use the services.

One company left out of the equation was Nintendo, who provides some online services through Nintendo Switch Online. Nintendo Switch Online includes access to classic games and is required for those that want to play Switch games online, but its far less prevalent than Xbox Live or PSN, which could explain why it was left out of the study. In any case, as gaming becomes an increasingly more online experience, it will be interesting to see how companies work to combat outages, and if there will be less outages this next year compared to the previous one.

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