PSN down: Gamers report problems with online gaming service after hackers promise Christmas Day cyberattack

Hacker groups promised to attack both the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live on Christmas Day

The PS4 chat feature is harder to monitor "than Whatsapp" (Getty Images)

PlayStation Network users are reporting that some features of the online gaming service have gone down, after hackers threatened to disable it with a cyberattack on Christmas Day.

The outages will disappoint gamers who received new consoles for Christmas.

Writing on Twitter, PlayStation said they were aware that some users were having problems accessing certain services, and asked for their patience while they investigated.

PlayStation mentioned users were having issues accessing their friends lists, but some gamers on Twitter said other features, such as signing in, playing online and downloading games, were not working for them - it's not yet clear whether these cases were just individual faults, or due to wider problems with the network itself.

At the same time, others said they had successfully managed to access the service and were experiencing no issues.

It's not yet known what has caused the problems, but some have blamed the hacker groups Phantom Squad and Lizard Squad, who promised to attack the PlayStation Network and Xbox Live over Christmas.

The same thing happened last year, when millions were left unable to play their new games online over the festive period due to hacker-led cyberattacks.

On Christmas morning, one Twitter user wrote: "Well, it's safe to say so many kids will be very disappointed today. Lizard Squad have taken down PSN again."

Another said: "Don't tell me PSN is down, that's the best day of the year to game!"

The hacker groups promised to perform a DDoS attack, overloading PlayStation's servers with traffic and bringing them down.

However, PlayStation Network's official status website says all services are currently up and running.

There aren't currently too many users reporting problems with Xbox Live, suggesting the network could have escaped the hackers - but problems could develop throughout the day.

This story will be updated as the outages and problems progress.