PSA: PlayStation Network down for maintenance until 8PM ET

by Randy Nelson on Nov 18th 2010 2:02PM

Unable to connect to the PlayStation Network? Don't worry, it's not your console -- it's everyone's in the United States. With no apparent warning, PSN was taken offline for maintenance at 11:05AM ET this morning and is due to be back up-and-running again by 8PM ET. Sony announced the unexpected downtime in a tweet after maintenance had begun.

You may be able to access your friends list and other services sporadically, but Sony isn't making any promises as to how long even limited functionality will be possible. Oh, and if you see a screen with the ominous warning that "the PlayStation Network has been suspended," it's just a confusing way of saying that the network is down for service -- it doesn't mean your account has been suspended. Phew.

We'll leave it to your imagination to fantasize about all of the exciting changes that actually aren't happening behind-the-scenes, like the roll out of cross-game voice chat. Go ahead and muse with your fellow commenters while we put on a fresh pot of coffee. Won't you stay awhile?

Source: Twitter

Tags: maintenance, playstation, ps3, psa, psn, psp, scea, sony

Reader Comments (62)

Look, I love my PS3 and this is probably the best console I've ever owned. But these constant maintenance days are starting to get annoying.
I'm not even effected, because I'm usually at work (now) when this happens, but I can see how this could be bothersome to many people, especially kids in college.

How often do they occur?
I don't hear about them much.
Kinda sucks they don't warn you beforehand though...

@BlackedOut
they dont happen often

@BlackedOut It seems like it's been every 3 - 4 weeks lately. The constant firmware updates (which bring little to no new features, except anti-piracy measures) are getting out of hand as well.

@Roxas560 did a search on joystiq (there search function is kind of bad), this is what I pulled up by just typing in "playstation maintenance", though Im sure you can find more if you search other terms like "PSN", or "PSN down"...
http://www.joystiq.com/search/?q=playstation%2Bmaintenance&invocationType=wl-joystiq

One for June, August, September. I'm pretty sure there were more in between.

@mywhitenoise *their search...
By the way, also a maintenance day in October according to that search.

@mywhitenoise

well i should have clarified. im somehow to magically able to access psn even through down time so im hardly aware they are happening. i honestly was online unaware of this maintance issue until i started browsing joystiq for the blackops patch fix list.... would explain my horrible connection to most people though

@BlackedOut They Tweeted about it last night, they usually Tweet that it's going to be undergoing maintenance beforehand (unless there is some emergency).

@mywhitenoise

They always say the PSN is going to be down for hours but most of the time I don't notice any complications and use the PSN just fine during the posted "down time".

@mywhitenoise
We should all be happy;

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/03/xbox-live-outage-day-13-still-up-and-down-still-preventing-fu/

http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/22/xbox-live-suffering-from-major-outage-on-christmas-weekend-ouc/

@BlackedOut
Is that a Haiku or something?

@megapenguinx
It was on the european PSN blog around lunch yesterday aswell
http://blog.eu.playstation.com/2010/11/17/playstation-network-scheduled-maintenance-2

@Roxas560
Yeah, I was playing online earlier on and in between rounds checked twitter and there was a 30 minute old tweet saying that PSN was down, yet I'd been using it consistently w/o trouble for several hours...

@mywhitenoise

I'm positive that I've seen this exact post before, verbatim on a recent PSN maintenance post on Joystiq. Stop trolling.

@mywhitenoise Even if there is a maintenance day once a month, it doesn't even take up the whole day. So, let's say it takes 12 hours to perform maintenance (the actual time is usually much less than that). So if this happens once a month then there have been 6 days that the PSN is down. That means less than 2% of the time the network is "down," and even when it's down you can usually still access PSN and play games online.

@chimpsmith Why don't you check my post history, jerk-off.

@Roxas560 I'm always able to access PSN when joystiq say's I can't. So to me, i never experience any PSN down time.

@mywhitenoise.

I don't get the firmware updates problem. It happens like once a month, takes like 5-10 mins, and usually adds a feature or two besides the anti-piracy measure. Works for me.

@megapixel Actually he got downvoted by 2 reasons:
1 - it's not that often that he says, these "down-times" barely happens one time a month.
2 - even if it's a down-time, a lot of people got online, play online and got no problems acessing all the content, at least.

And WHAT THE HELL just Joystiq got "credits" about downvoted? Isn't that got it by people downvoting the post? I don't see your point on this, really...

And for the post... c'mon guys, just a few hours... have a little sex instead of playing at least for a while, godammit...

Not sure why they wouldn't put out a warning first about this.

Sloppy, sloppy, Sony.

@DericLee
I'm sure in your perfect euphoric world there are never unexpected occurrences.

@DericLee I think they are preparing to ban PSJailbreak users. The TOS have been modified recently outside the US to allow the suspension of consoles for using unauthorized hardware/software. Now this happens. If they're trying to catch pirates with their pants down, it would explain why it was so abrupt as well.

@DericLee

you mean like that tweet they sent out last night telling us that PSN will be down for maintenance tomorrow (today)... nice fail though

What the hell, was just about to go and buy Wipeout HD.

@Walkdiesel
Looks damn nice, getting big Final Fantasy 5-6 vibe. Only for psp?
Shame.

They need more Playstation Plus subscribers before we can complain.

Well at least it will give me a chance to play campaign mode for black ops

@Re3
Only if your PSn account is signed up or if you don't mind not earning trophies

@NoirR He'll still earn trophies, they just won't be attributed to his account until he syncs his trophies.

"We'll leave it to your imagination to fantasize about all of the exciting changes that actually aren't happening behind-the-scenes, like the roll out of cross-game voice chat. "

Well the only thing I really care about is a completely new browser, but other stuff would be nice... oh well, a man can dream.

I guess now's a good time for me to finish up the campaign in Black Ops.

Things happen. It's no different than if a server crashed in an MMO. It could be an unexpected maintenance issue.

Of course it could also go with the rumor that hackers have updated Jailbreak and can get past the newest firmware too.

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/PS-Jailbreak-Crack-Hack-Home-Brew-Linux,news-8861.html

I just got done playing Black Ops online, didn't have a problem. Haven't tried to access the PSN store since this morning though.

I wonder if this is related to the sporadic disconnects me and my friends were experiencing in Uncharted 2 last night. They were pretty annoying.

Weak.......because your PSN service is free we here at Sony do not feel the need to let you know when you cannot play Call of Duty: Black Ops online. Don't worry when we end up going the way of XBL subscription service (because lets face it we are clearly losing this battle) we will feel obligated to do so. Sony needs to get their S**t together. Buy American!!

@CleverSkeptic we're not going the way of XBL (paying for ads), and I will NEVER pay for such a thing. Way to over exaggerate.

P.S. COD is lame.

@mywhitenoise
Salmon and yellowtail are where it's at!

@CleverSkeptic
Yeah...

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/03/xbox-live-outage-day-13-still-up-and-down-still-preventing-fu/

@eNriqeu

Yeah, that was almost three years ago. Got anything recent?

@CaptNink Dosn't matter, your paid service was down longer than the free service has ever been down.

BUT I WANT TO PLAY MOAR BLACK OPS!!!!

Guh I'll stay in the lab longer today

me and the 2 other guys playing dj hero 2 online are going to be pissed!

"like the roll out of cross-game voice chat. "

You had to go and stir that pot, didn't you joystiq?

No Rock Band 3 drumming for me tonight, I guess... :(

I knew about this a day or so ago from a friend so really...... it was announced just not sure where .. most likely the blog i take it .. who knows.

The Same Randy Nelson that worked on PSM, my favorite gaming mag growing up wrote this? This can't be the same guy. That dude was cool beans.

What is this world coming too?

Well, you get what you pay for.

I'm still able to access PSN, sync trophies, etc. It says it's down for everyone in the United States, and I'm in Canada. Usually living in Canada is a bad thing when it comes to PSN, so I guess we are lucky.

I was stuck at the car dealership and I was going to buy Peggle. No wonder I couldn't get into the store. I thought it might be their janky internet.

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 50 Comments

PSA: PlayStation Network down for maintenance until 8PM ET

Reader Comments (62)

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:04PM mywhitenoise said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:10PM BlackedOut said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:15PM Roxas560 said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:16PM mywhitenoise said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:18PM mywhitenoise said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:20PM mywhitenoise said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:24PM Roxas560 said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:34PM megapenguinx said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:51PM golfs4panzys said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:51PM eNriqeu said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 3:02PM supersonic124 said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 3:53PM Raniz85 said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 4:49PM Indefinite Implosion said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 4:51PM chimpsmith said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 4:51PM NIck PSN ID Rattlehead91 said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 5:35PM mywhitenoise said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 5:59PM mmmfishtacos said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 6:03PM mmmfishtacos said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 7:16PM PhilipJWitow said

Posted: Nov 19th 2010 6:15AM AmethystHarp said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:06PM DericLee said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:14PM carmaction said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 3:22PM xyloPhipps said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 3:23PM PR0F3TA said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:07PM Verb4tim said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:54PM Verb4tim said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:13PM tangocat said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:16PM Re3 said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 3:54PM NoirR said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 4:55PM NIck PSN ID Rattlehead91 said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:17PM Generalguy41 said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:20PM Ospov said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:25PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:25PM Breakdown said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:34PM davidjtate said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:48PM CleverSkeptic said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:55PM mywhitenoise said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 3:06PM killdash9 said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 3:31PM eNriqeu said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 4:02PM CaptNink said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 6:11PM mmmfishtacos said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 2:51PM DrChristopher said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 3:02PM deaftly said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 3:02PM scratchh said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 3:04PM Daruna said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 3:07PM HardBoiled2009 said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 3:18PM BigEgo007 said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 3:31PM chuckharms said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 3:38PM Slayer15 said

Posted: Nov 18th 2010 4:07PM GreenElf said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WB conjures up Harry Potter for Kinect this fall

Featured Stories

Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world

Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation

Super Joystiq Podcast 004: 38 Studios meltdown, Gravity Rush, Civilization 5: Gods & Kings, Dragon's Dogma

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW