Gamers from around the globe have waited patiently for the 2013 holiday season to commence. The arrival of Sony’s new PlayStation 4 and Nintendo’s Wii U consoles had people flocking to websites and stores in search of new games. PC gaming platform, Steam, also had gamers flooding in online as a result of their advertised gaming titles like “Skyrim” and “Deus Ex” selling for less than $10.00. All three systems however, experienced Internet and access overload issues, resulting in considerable downtime for Sony’s PlayStation Network, Nintendo’s eShop, and Steam’s website.

On Sony’s PlayStation forums and Twitter, some users reported local outages and glitches they experienced while online. According to Sony representatives, however, the online servers were working properly. This is despite the fact that gamers reported that they were not able to gain “seamless access” to the network.

Nintendo of America responded in the opposite manner, posting a tweet saying, “We are truly sorry for any inconvenience,” Nintendo’s network experienced glitches since the morning of December 26th. This meant gamers were unable to create new Nintendo Network Identifications, or NNIDs. It was also not possible to use the eShop system efficiently. Representatives from Nintendo are asking gamers to be patient as they are working on their end to fix the bugs.

System downtime also plagued Steam who experienced difficulties and was not accessible for several hours on Christmas. Steam’s Twitter support feed did not assist users whatsoever. Error messages were displayed on user’s screens stating that the server was offline. The selection of games for under $10.00 as well as the announcements of free ones certainly didn’t help matters as it meant that hundreds of thousands of people were simultaneously attempting to get online to download them. Adding fuel to the fire in particular though was the free download offer of Valve’s “Left 4 Dead 2″ on top of the all the other discounts.

The end result was a frustrating Christmas Day for many gamers across the globe. With three major systems encountering technical difficulties, perhaps accessibility will be one of the first things major gaming companies will consider before rolling out future major releases around the holiday season.