PlayStation Network down for 14 hours

Sony says it is taking the PlayStation Network offline for 14 hours on Thursday to perform essential maintenance. The Network will be down from 4pm on Thursday until 6am on Friday morning UK time, meaning new PS Vita owners will have to do without online play or access to the PlayStation Store. The outage, which of course will affect PS3 owners also, represents the third time in as many months that Sony has taken the Network down for regular scheduled maintenance. Maintenance window A post on the official PlayStation blog says that this particular outage will see the PSN become a completely no access zone. "Unlike typical maintenance events, consumers who are already signed-in to PSN will be signed-out, and consumers will be unable to sign in for the duration of the maintenance window. "During this time, users won't be able to access the PlayStation Store, PlayStation Home, Account Management or play online." The news will come as a blow to anyone who has splashed out on a PS Vita as a payday treat over the last couple of days. You do get the sense that Sony is being extra careful these days following the great PSN outage of 2011 following a hack that saw personal details of over 100m users compromised.