Update at 1:30 p.m. PDT: Sony’s site says PSN is now functioning as normal.
Sony’s online infrastructure is once again struggling to keep up with demand.
PlayStation Network is busted, according to the company’s status website. Over the last 20 minutes, dozens of gamers have taken to social media to complain about their inability to access certain games on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3. This intermittent outage is causing issues with people trying to play online multiplayer games like Rocket League and Destiny, but it’s also causing problems for primarily single-player games that rely on a PSN connection to communicate with a third-party server.
Sony says that its team is working on a fix.
“You may have some difficulty launching games, applications, or online features,” reads the PSN status site. “Our engineers are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.”
Gaming isn’t the only PlayStation feature affected by this outage. The company notes that some gamers will also have trouble connecting to PlayStation Video and PlayStation Vue as well as streaming sites like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Instant Video.
Of course, this isn’t an isolated incident for PlayStation Network. The service has gone offline repeatedly throughout this year without Sony ever commenting on a cause. While this is the nature of the Internet, it’s still not something many consumers sit well with considering many pay a regular fee to enjoy the benefits of PlayStation Plus. It also always causes some concern due to the five-day downtime PSN went through during the Christmas holidays as the result of a cyberattack.
At the same time, Sony isn’t alone in having troubles with its online service. Xbox Live has had almost as many outages throughout 2015 while also charging a monthly fee to its Gold subscribers.