Don’t Panic: PlayStation Network Down

The growing popularity of the PS3 hasn’t gone unnoticed today with downtime causing users to hit Twitter.

PlayStation Network down messages complained of little notice from Sony on the downtime, and there are some suggestions from users that the network has been deleting trophies.

At this stage all we have to go on is a message of the official PS3 blog noting that the network is down for maintenance “for 60 minutes,” although oddly the message doesn’t suggest when this period started or is scheduled to end. (UPDATE: see end)

Some PlayStation Network users on Twitter are suggesting that the maintenance message is a cover-up for the network being down without warning.

At the time of writing, I can contact the network from Australia, so it might just be affecting the US servers.

Look on the bright side though (if you’re a PS3 user like I am:) it’s not as though the PlayStation Network is down nearly as regularly as the XBox Live service is ?

UPDATE: maybe the conspiracy theories might be right: the network status blog is down now as well,although it might just be people hitting it for news.

Sony has also posted to the PlayStation Twitter account that “We’re aware that many of you are having problems connecting to PSN, and yes, we’re looking into it. Stay tuned for updates.”

More when we have it.

Update 2: problems are still ongoing as at 6:30pm PST (1:30pm AEDT.) Also I can’t connect from Australia so it’s widespread. No new update from Sony as yet on the issue.

Update 3: latest from Sony, PS3 slim units are connecting, and I can connect here from Australia on a slim as at 9pm PST (4pm AEDT). Wondering why the connection issues might be with old PS3’s though?