Update 2 (12/27 9:03 CST): Both services struggled last night, but it appears that things are slowly getting back on track. Xbox Live's service status shows it as up and running. Sony posted a tweet confirming that PSN is stabilizing and slowly coming back online. However, the service is still down for people. Time will tell when it will be working for everyone. We will be watching the situation and report as we can confirm more.
Update 1: PSN is still down. You can follow the "Ask Sony" Twitter account to keep updated. This was the last official update that hit around three hours ago:
We still do not know what caused the outages on either platform, as both Microsoft and Sony has yet to comment.
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Did you get a console or new game for Christmas? You probably were pretty disappointed to find that Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network were down. It’s not out of the norm for this to happen on a holiday, as more people flood the network with their new purchases. However, weeks prior, a group called Lizard Squad, said it would target the networks on Christmas through DDoS attacks (sending heavy traffic to the network, the equivalent of a traffic jam on a freeway). Their involvement has yet to be confirmed by Microsoft or Sony.
Xbox Live got up and running last night for the most part, but PSN issues remain. The support page still has its status as “OFFLINE.” The “Ask Sony” twitter account last tweeted about 9 hours ago.
Let us know if the comments below if you’re still having issues. We’ll be keeping an eye on PSN to let you know when it stabilizes.