Sony has announced another of its scheduled maintenance outages to the PlayStation Network today, and as a result customers who have a PS3 or PS Vita console will see outages to their PlayStation online service from today.
Sony has announced that it will be performing maintenance to upgrade the software for the PlayStation Store on Monday (today) March 4th. This maintenance will start at approximately 5:00 am PDT (6:00am MDT / 7:00am CDT / 8:00am EDT) and end around 9:00pm PDT (10:00pm MDT / 11:00pm CDT / 12:00pm EDT) Monday, March 4th.
As per usual, if you have signed into the PSN within 5 days prior to the start of maintenance (since February 27th) then you will be able to play games online and enjoy apps such as Netflix, Hulu Plus and Music Unlimited during the downtime.
If you are able to log on then you will see a message that states “Sony Entertainment Network is undergoing maintenance” when attempting to access and some customers who have signed into the service since the 27th will will still lose access. Sony “apologize(s) for this inconvenience and are working hard to restore access as soon as possible”.
The last few scheduled PSN outages have gone on much longer than Sony originally stated so we don’t hold any hope that tonight’s downtime will be the 4 hours that Sony has suggested. Again, it’s another annoyance for customers who own a PS3 or PS Vita as this now seems like a monthly affair for Sony just to run an update.
Sony has offered a notification system that will remind customers by sending a notice when PSN is fully restored, and has advised to follow the official PlayStation Twitter account at @AskPlayStation.