PlayStation Network is gradually coming back online after an evening outage left users unable to access certain games for several hours.
At the time of this article’s publication, Sony’s PSN service status page continued to display warnings across several areas, including Account Management, Gaming and Social, PlayStation Video, and the PlayStation Store.
The page also carried a general advisory stating that “some services are experiencing issues.”
This PSN disruption impacted all currently supported PlayStation consoles (PS Vita, PS3, PS4, PS5) and various services requiring a PSN login.
Sony’s Japanese Ask PlayStation Twitter account acknowledged the issue, stating that the company was investigating and conducting recovery efforts. “We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused,” Sony said.
Despite this, users have reported that PSN is gradually being restored, and confirmed successful logins to PSN from the UK earlier this morning.
The outage has reignited concerns over the lack of true offline play capabilities for many single-player games.
The Twitter account for Does It Play?, which tests commercial games to verify if they work without an internet connection, tweeted: “Good thing we have internet so we aren’t affected by offline services. Oh, wait, that’s not how it works.
“Has anyone tried registering a detachable disc drive? Does that still work?”
The timing of the outage coincided with Sony’s recent acknowledgment of another issue: a “technical error” that led to changes on the PS5 home screen, replacing unique video game artwork with intrusive ads.
