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Although gamers may be unwrapping shiny new PS4 and Xbox Ones today, we are disappointed to report that those consoles’ services might be slightly limited.
today, we are disappointed to report that those consoles’ services might be slightly limited. Both the PSN and Xbox Live are down on Christmas, which is preventing gamers from connecting to any online services.
While it’s unclear at this point whether the PSN and Xbox Live outages are simply a result of Christmas onrush or a direct attack, hacker groups are nonetheless taking credit. Some will remember Lizard Squad was one of the groups who threatened to shut down PSN on Christmas, and they of course are now touting their work.
Lizard Squad actually nicked PSNearlier this month with what they called a small taste of this Christmas DDoS attack, but they are not the only claiming responsibility for the outage. Several other hacker groups are saying it was their work that took down PSN and Xbox Live, which could by why the connection problems are so prolific. Sonyand Microsoftmay have been prepared for one attack, but multiple attacks surely crippled their online capabilities. And while these attacks are meant to punish the companies behind these consoles, they are really only punishing gamers.
Since gamers cannot connect their PS4s or Xbox Ones to their respective online services, they will be left without some of the new console and game updates. For example, those who nabbed a copy of Assassin’s Creed Unity or Halo: The Master Chief Collection alongside their PS4 or Xbox One will not be able to download the essential patches that have released for each game over the last month.
Obviously, a holiday onrush is expected, especially one year removed from the launch of two major consoles. But even so, it’s no less disappointing to unwrap a brand new console and discover you can’t use all of its features. No Netflix, no Destiny , and no Xbox One dashboard updates.
There are some lucky players who have been able to get online, but both Microsoft and Sony are reporting outages for a large number of players. We’ll keep you posted if and when the servers reach a stable state.
[UPDATE: Both Xbox Live and PSN appear to be in a stable state, but some are still reporting log in problems]
Have you experienced any difficulty logging into PSN or Xbox Live? Do you think this is a direct attack or just holiday overload?
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Follow Anthony on Twitter @ANTaormina