The company has not made an official statement about the cause of the problems

Feb 7, 2012 12:02 GMT  ·  By

Video game publisher and hardware maker Sony has said that it expected to see all problems with the PlayStation Network and Store be fully resolved before the weekly content update, allowing all players to use the services and get the new content without any issue.

SuperFast Zombie, who is one of the official PlayStation forums’ moderators, has told concerned gamers that, “If this issue continues and is going to affect the Store update then it will of course be mentioned. However we are hopeful that it will be resolved before then.”

Sony says that its engineering team is working on the error, which makes it impossible for affected users to download purchased games and downloadable content, regardless of whether they acquired it using promotional codes or actual money payments.

The error appeared after a maintenance period which ran from Thursday to Friday of last week, and Sony has not mentioned it on the official PlayStation blog, which might suggest that only a small number of users are affected.

There’s also a possibility that the company is keeping it under wraps because it hopes to quickly solve it and will only make an official announcement if it persists after the weekly content update.

Sony has announced that it is renaming the PlayStation Network to the Sony Entertainment Network, although it is not clear whether the move has anything to do with the error.

The move is part of a wider plan from Sony to create a new network which links not only home gaming consoles but also handhelds, smartphones and intelligent television sets.

It will allow users to download a variety of content on their devices and is part of a wider strategy from Sony to make services rather than hardware the center of any future business move under new President and CEO Kaz Hirai.