14 DAY TRIAL // The PlayStation Network is set to get a new serious maintenance period on April 21, which is Easter Monday for all those who are affiliated with most branches of Christianity, although at the moment, Sony has not made an official announcement about it.
The information comes from TheSixAxis, which quoted a removed Twitter message from Chris Owen, who is a community manager for Sony in the United Kingdom.
It is currently unclear whether the PlayStation Network maintenance period, which will start at 16:00 PM Greenwich Mean Time and which is scheduled to end on February 22 at 4 AM GMT, will affect only European users of the service or if those in the United States will also be forced to deal with it.
Online games will be open for those who have signed up into their accounts during the 24-hour period that precedes the downtime, but all other core services linked to the PSN infrastructure will be down for the entire period.
Sony has not officially acknowledged the existence of the maintenance, but it will probably offer an official announcement in the coming days.
It’s unclear why the company needs to bring down a service that is very important for users of the PlayStation 4, the PS3 and the PlayStation Vita for such a long period.
Sony has been rather tight lipped about the reasons for its maintenance recently, so we will probably not get an official reason for the downtime on April 21.
There might be a connection with the PlayStation Now service, which allows gamers to stream a wide variety of video games to their PlayStation 4’s, as it is currently in beta stage and it is receiving constant updates from the development team.
PS Now is currently set to be officially launched in North America during the summer, although pricing is not yet announced.
At the same time, Sony might be simply upgrading some elements of its infrastructure that are required to deal with increased activity on the PlayStation Network linked to the successful launch of the PS4, which offers quite a bit more content in digital form.
The next-gen console is close to the 7-million mark in terms of worldwide sales, which is significantly more than the rival Xbox One from Microsoft.
More information about their performance will be offered once the NPD Group report for the month of March in the United States is officially launched.