14 DAY TRIAL // The team at Sony in charge of the PlayStation Network announces that it is planning to take down the service for maintenance starting Thursday, January 15, at 17 Greenwich Mean Time, for a four-hour period, with all the features set to be back up and available for all users by 21 GMT.
The PlayStation Store will be closed for access on all devices, as will entertainment services, PlayStation Network Account Management, and account registration.
Those who are looking to play their favorite games online will need to make sure that they are logged into the PlayStation Network account before the maintenance period starts and will be unable to get into the service before the end of the downtime.
The official announcement adds, "In addition, you will not be able to sign in to PlayStation Network from eu.playstation.com. During this maintenance, you can continue to collect in-game trophies and these will be updated on your profile once PlayStation Network is back up and running."
At the moment, Sony is not offering any sort of details on why the maintenance is required and whether there are any functionality changes that the user community will see once it is complete.
The secrecy is somewhat annoying to players but it is usual for companies when they are simply looking to upgrade their infrastructure.
The social media presence of Sony will announce whether the PSN downtime is prolonged.
Sony has been targeted by attacks lately
The most probable reason for the PlayStation Network downtime is that Sony is aiming to test and maybe update its security measures in order to make the entire service more resilient in the future.
Over the holiday break, the PSN was taken down by an attack and it took days to recover, prompting the company to offer gamers a price cut and more PS Plus days in order to get their goodwill back.
Sony as a company was also attacked in order to block the release of "The Interview."
The PSN is important to the PlayStation 4 home console, which is at the moment leading in terms of current-gen sales and could lose its gap to the Xbox One if security troubles affect the service in the future.