If anyone was having difficulty connecting to Xbox Live or PlayStation Network this holiday, you were not alone. For both the Microsoft and Sony game consoles experienced outages, and on one of the worst days possible, as thousands of Xbox Ones and PlayStation 4's were opened in houses across the country this Christmas.
The Verge reports a hacker group known as the Lizard Squad promised previously to take down the service on this day, and have now made good on their promise. As Polygon discussed, this group has taken credit for the outages, but neither Microsoft or Sony confirmed the cause of the problems. The companies have both just merely addressed issues with their sites, and reveal they are working on the problems.
PlayStation's status page says the service is online, and that engineers are investigating while users continue experiencing problems. Xbox.com, meanwhile, only recently reloaded.
The timing of these hacks is particularly interesting, with Sony releasing their controversial comedy The Interview yesterday on Xbox Video, as well as on YouTube and Google Play and in select theaters today. It doesn't seem as though there is any direct correlation between the two, however.
Image courtesy of Scott Kirkland/INFphoto.com
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