When worldwide lockdowns and stay-at-home orders were first implemented, Xbox Live saw a massive increase in users and activity. Because of this, Xbox announced in March that some services would be suspended or adjusted for Xbox Live. One major change was suspending users' ability to submit their own gamer picture, club pictures, and club backgrounds.
The increased activity on Xbox Live caused the Microsoft team to be overburdened, especially while dealing with working from home and decreased resources. The increase in users and adjustments to Xbox support caused a few problems like Xbox Live outages, but also produced positive effects like a massive increase in Xbox Live friends and Game Pass sales.
Now that some restrictions in several areas have been lifted, Xbox Live has been able to keep up with the increased usage. As of now, Xbox Live has enabled user-submitted pictures again. The pictures still must go through a moderation process to ensure all pictures are appropriate, and moderation is still handled by a live team and can take several days to approve. Now that the service has been restored, it is expected that many users will take the opportunity to change their gamer picture, so the moderators will most likely be busy.
As the weeks count down until the Xbox event for the Xbox Series X, players are still being supported on Xbox One with various deals and rewards. Xbox has also ramped up games available for Game Pass, which has exceeded expectations according to the head of the Xbox brand, Phil Spencer. As Xbox moves into the next generation consoles, many improvements to the Xbox ecosystem are expected.
Now that Xbox has seen a record number of users and usage, it may prepare the support team for the introduction of the Xbox Series X. When released, it will have substantial competition for users from the PlayStation 5 and even current generation consoles. Both next-generation consoles have very impressive specs and exciting games releasing for them. Xbox has claimed a large pool of backward compatible games for the Series X, so players will be enticed to upgrade consoles and still play their favorite Xbox One games. For now, players can customize their gamer pictures again, which may carry over to the Xbox Series X when released.
Source: Windows Central