The good news is that a Microsoft spokesperson has confirmed to us that "Our team is working to address download delays some users in Australia may be experiencing". The bad news? Is that like many people in Australia I'm simply unable to update or install any game. And when the progress bar begins to move, it does so at near dial-up speeds.

Now this may not sound like a bad thing but the problem is a bunch of games got sizable patches in the past few days. Including Sea of Thieves, Ghost Recon Wildlands, Fortnite, Overwatch, Warframe, and many more.

Oh, how I would love to be able to fire up The Division to check out its 4K make-over.

What's strange is that as per the many reports found on Reddit, Whirlpool, and other forums and Facebook groups the issue is affecting several but not all Aussie Xbox owners across Victoria and other states.

With the problem itself being one of those true head-scratchers. Where:

• Downloads begin at full speed before slowing to a crawl very quickly and then stopping completely.
  
• Turning the Xbox One off causes games to install/update at around 1GB of data per hour or no progress at all for several hours.
  
• Messing with DNS or advanced network settings seems to fix the problem, but only for a few minutes.
  
• Whilst stuck in a "Installing" or "Updating" loop you're unable to load any game or app as you get a time-out message. Rebooting the console seems to fix this, as does pausing installations or updates.
  
• All network tests showcase full connection speeds with no issues or lag when accessing the store or community hubs

So yeah, definitely a weird one. And without any official word from Microsoft other than the regular troubleshooting advice of "hey, why don't you turn it off and on", this led to some desperate gamers across Reddit and Facebook to factory reset their consoles only to be hit with the same slow and non-existant speeds when the initial console update is forced.

Also we do know that this issue isn't affecting everyone. And that it isn't limited to any specific hardware revision as the problem cropped up across both my launch edition Xbox One and newer Xbox One X.

With the weekend coming up right now I'm downloading Sea of Thieves on PC (thanks Xbox Play Anywhere) at full speed alongside updating Overwatch for the Archives event and Ghost Recon Wildlands for some Sam Fisher action.