Update: Sony said around 1:45 pm PST that the service was back up.
The Sony PlayStation Network (PSN) suffered an outage today and the online gaming service, which had more than 77 million registered users earlier this year, still isn’t working.
After Sony’s big PSN outage in April, it’s easy to assume the worst about a little downtime with the network. The six-week outage earlier this year came after hackers found a flaw in the network’s security. More than 10 million credit card numbers may have been stolen in that attack.
Now is not a good time for the outage, since it’s the middle of the fall video game selling season and Sony’s Resistance 3 shooter game is generating a lot of demand for multiplaying gaming sessions.
The service has been down for a number of hours. Sony recently distributed a v3.72 firmware update that went live on the 19th. Users have to download that to get online. But having downloaded that patch won’t help you get online during this outage.
Sony has pledged to do better on security, saying it would spend more on the network to ensure its safety.