How will you remember Christmas 2014? Maybe it was setting fire to the tree with your new drone, or perhaps Grandma managed to go a whole hour without making a slightly racist remark. For many people it was the frustration of not being able to access PSN or Xbox Live because a bunch of bored hackers decided to take both services down. What a time to be alive.
Understandably, Sony and Microsoft both felt a little responsible for letting their servers be taken down so easily so both are compensating players with a few goodies. Sony will be giving everyone five free days of PlayStation Plus along with a 10% discount token to be used on the PlayStation Store.
Microsoft also announced that it's extending its latest weekly Xbox 360 and Xbox One deals, which will now go through to January 6.
Power to the people
While we're on the subject, a different hacking group, H4LT, offered up a less intrusive Christmas gift by leaking the November Xbox One development kits. That might not sound so exciting on the face, but the leak revealed that Xbox One developers now have access to more CPU power.
Since October, developers have been allowed access to a seventh processing core that was previously reserved for background activities. There are payoffs for this extra gain, including fewer voice commands, but the result will hopefully bring more balance to the force. Only time will tell.
Dead exciting
Finally, this Christmas also brought news that - surprise, surprise - The Last of Us 2 is probably happening and probably in the early stages of development.
Or at least that what Avalanche Studios senior character artist Michael Knowland let slip on his Linkedin profile. The former Naughty Dog artist listed one month of "prototyping head sculpts" on The Last of Us 2, which has since been removed.
Earlier in the year The Last of Us creative director Neil Druckmann said that the chances of a sequel were "50/50". Don't expect any firm details for a while - we've got Uncharted 4 coming, remember - but we suspect that a second game will choose to focus on a different story to Joel and Ellie's.
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