14 DAY TRIAL // Video game hardware developer and video game publisher Sony has announced that the PlayStation Network service will be taken down for scheduled maintenance during Thursday, the second day of February.
The announcement about the downtime was made on the European forums of Sony, which might mean that it will only affect European gamers, although Sony has a history of poor communication when it comes to PSN maintenance and firmware deployment, and the entire service might be affected.
The Thursday outage will begin at 2:00 PM Greenwich Mean Time and will continue until 8:00 AM on Friday, February 3.
Sony says that the Home social space will be entirely taken offline during the period and that the PlayStation Store, the account management service and the user registration element might be intermittently available.
A community manager from Sony stated, “Users who attempt to sign in after maintenance begins may receive the site notification page. If you are signed in before maintenance begins you should remain signed into your online session (although the above services will still be unavailable).”
The company has not said what changes it plans to make to the PlayStation Network during the downtime or whether users should look for any changes when the service is restored on February 3.
The PSN is at the core of the Sony experience for both the home console and the handheld devices it manufactures.
The company has recently announced that it has big plans for PSN and that in the near future it will also be used to link gaming devices with television sets and with other appliances, allowing users to get content and play games using a single account.
The PlayStation Network was brought down by hackers during April 2011, but since then the service has recovered and has become more stable than ever without losing users.