It seems that a small number of gamers are affected

Dec 8, 2014 07:53 GMT  ·  By

The PlayStation Network is currently down for some of its users in North America, and Sony says that it is investigating the issue, although at the moment the company is not ready to offer any details on what the problem might be and what measures will be required to eliminate them.

Gamers began reporting issues at around 6 PM Pacific Time yesterday, and since then the problem has been acknowledged in an official Twitter message which tells the community that multiple issues are linked to the PSN and they will be addressed as soon as possible.

The company claims that it will keep users updated, but it has not offered any more details since then, although many gamers are still reporting trouble on the social service.

At the moment, it is unclear how many gamers in North America are affected by the PlayStation Network problems or whether an outside attack is to blame.

So far, no group has claimed responsibility and it’s probable that Sony would have reacted much more quickly if the data of the users had been in danger.

Problems with the PlayStation Network mean that gamers might be unable to access their profiles, cannot engage in multiplayer, and might encounter troubles while trying to purchase content from the store.

This is an issue for the long-term future of the PlayStation 4, the PS3 and the Vita handheld because a lot of the most interesting experiences associated with the devices are linked to the online infrastructure.

Sony will probably offer more details on the PSN problem later, once the issues affecting it have been solved.

Online threats for all modern consoles

Earlier in the year, the team at Microsoft also played down the moment when DDoS attacks affected the Xbox Live service, which serves the Xbox One and the 360.

It seems that the company was worried that bringing too much attention to the group that carried them out would be counterproductive.

Both Sony and Microsoft have long touted the online capabilities of the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One as one of the main reasons for gamers to upgrade to the new devices, with a range of titles that are built around multiplayer and with plenty of apps designed to bring in extra content.

If groups can target them and bring them down for long periods, even for a small number of users, the trust placed in the two companies might drop and sales of the Xbox One and PS4 might suffer in 2015.

UPDATE: Sony says gamers should try to use the PSN again and that the issue has been solved on its end.  

PlayStation Network Images (6 Images)

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