Video game company Sony has announced that the European section of its PlayStation Network service will be down between 3 PM GMT and 8 PM GMT on Thursday, because some elements of the service need maintenance work.
The company says that some services might be offline even longer because of testing that needs to be done afterwards.
Players who have European PSN accounts will not be able to log in, will not be able to get to the
PlayStation Store and will not be able to manage their accounts.
The new Sony Entertainment Network will also be unavailable during the period.
PS Sign in is also disabled and even those who have signed in before the scheduled maintenance period might see themselves kicked out.
This means that gamers will be unable to engage with the multiplayer components of their video games, which might be a problem for those who have just picked up Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception and were interested in seeing how Naughty Dog evolved the multiplayer side of the game.
Sony has not said exactly what changes it might introduce to PSN.
The PSN has been hit by a big hacking attack during April of this year, with an unknown group managing to get access to personal details, including credit card details, for a huge number of users.
The network was down for more than one month and
Sony has said that it has upgraded its defenses.
Since then the number of users has actually increased, as has the value of content sold through it, with Sony saying that the upgraded service is becoming more important to gamers as more video, music and smaller games are added to it.
Sony sees the PlayStation Network as a service that, in the future, could also be accessed from television sets and other devices, allowing users to tailor their entertainment experience to their particular needs.
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