Christmas excitement turned into disappointment for many people who received PlayStation and Xbox devices Thursday.

The game systems require a connection to Sony or Microsoft. Those connections were disrupted by computer hackers.As a result, people couldn't play their eagerly awaited Christmas presents.A group called The Lizard Squad claimed responsibility for the hacking.According to the British Broadcasting Company, reports suggest The Lizard Squad is based in Russia.Without knowing who the individual hackers are, their headquarter location is difficult to prove, the BBC says.Early this morning, a message on the Xbox status page said that live core services were "up and running."Meanwhile, PlayStation said its engineers were continuing to work on "network issues."Tammy Figueroa of Tamaqua bought the PlayStation 4 for her son for Christmas. Her son was disappointed that she couldn't connect, said Figueroa, but he has a PlayStation 3 and was able to use that game.She wasn't the only one. Several people commented on the Times News Facebook page this morning that they had trouble connecting.Kim Smith said, "Got Xbox one and games are stuck on 1 percent download. Was wondering why, guess now I know."To make the most of the Xbox and PlayStation consoles, players have to connect to the Internet in order to reach the console manufacturers' computer servers.The outage has stopped people accessing some of the core services, such as registering a new account, connecting with other people to play the same game and connecting to entertainment channels via the console.According to Bob Miller, supervisor of the MIS Department at the Times News, the hacking of the Sony and Microsoft networks isn't likely to affect personal computers or systems.Miller described it as a "denial of service attack."He said, "It was an attack on networks that had negative impact on the flow of Internet traffic. That specific type of attack was targeted at the company and not the user."A connection between the Sony movie "The Interview," about a fictional plot to assassinate North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un, and the service disruptions has not been confirmed.Last month, hackers collected personally identifiable information about Sony Pictures Entertainment employees and their dependents, emails between employees, information about executive salaries at the company, copies of unreleased Sony films, and other information.That hacker group went under the moniker "Guardians of Peace."Sony distributed the film on Wednesday to select theaters as well as through PlayStation and Xbox.