Xbox Live, PlayStation Network offline on Christmas

A hacking group calling itself Lizard Squad took credit for the disruptions

Xbox, PlayStation networks go down on Christmas Day 01:20

In a sour Christmas surprise for gamers eager to play with their new Xboxes or PlayStations, Microsoft and Sony's online services were down Thursday.

Players were unable to sign into Xbox Live or the PlayStation Network on Christmas Eve and again on Christmas day. For hours on Thursday, the support sites listed the services as "limited" and "offline," respectively. Both Microsoft and Sony acknowledged the issues on Twitter, saying that they were working to resolve them.

We're aware users are having issues logging into XBL & are actively working to resolve. Please visit http://t.co/99xfLNN0o8 for updates ^JX
— Xbox Support (1-5) (@XboxSupport) December 25, 2014

We are still looking into the PSN issues reported earlier. Thanks again for your continued patience today.
— Ask PlayStation (@AskPlayStation) December 25, 2014

A hacking group called Lizard Squad has taken credit for the outages on Twitter. Their involvement is not confirmed.

Amanda Schupak

Amanda Schupak is the science and technology editor at CBSNews.com

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