UPDATE 14:59: Playstation Network is back up.
Sony’s PlayStation Network has been down as of Thursday afternoon for PlayStation 4 users. The network has down intermittently for PS4 gamers for several hours now, and the Japanese tech company confirmed the issue on its official website.
The message explains some users may experience difficulties involving social network features, game launch and applications. This current outage is just the latest in a string of outages affecting Sony’s PlayStation Network. Late last year, the system went down for an entire week all starting on Christmas Day. That issue was the result of a cyber attack that also affected Microsoft’s Xbox Live network.
Since that major outage, the PlayStation Network had a total of five separate outages. Furthermore, none of the issues were related to deliberate maintenance. VentureBeat previously asked Sony about the issues, but has not received a response to date.
Gamers are experiencing a variety of issues from the current outage. Venture Beat’s Jeff Grubb said that he had no problem loading Battlefield: Hardline. However, he noted he was already logged in to the PlayStation Network before the outages began. Although he could launch the Electronic Arts game, he could not access the multiplayer option.
Similarly, Grubb was also able to load Bloodborne, but he was not able to start the game in online mode.
