Microsoft and Sony have been working to restore internet platforms for their Xbox and PlayStation gamers’ consoles.

Attacks disabled the online services on Christmas Day, making it difficult for users to log on.

A message on the Xbox status page on Friday said that live core services were “up and running”. Meanwhile, PlayStation said its engineers were continuing to work on “network issues”.

A hacking group called Lizard Squad claimed to have caused the problems.

The name is the same used by a group of hackers that has targeted Sony in the past.

There are 48 million subscribers to Microsoft’s system for the Xbox and more than double that for the PlayStation system, which has some 110 million.