PSN Going Down For Maintenance Today

Sony will be performing maintenance on PlayStation Network later today. During this period, several features of the network will be inaccessible to all players.

PSN's maintenance will run from 9 AM to 12:30 PM Pacific Time, or 12 PM to 3:30 PM Eastern. I imagine most of you will be at class or work during that time so you probably won't notice the disruption. Sony notes that this is only the "expected" duration though so it may actually be longer than that.

"The PlayStation Store, PlayStation Home and Account Management will not be available during this time, and users may receive a maintenance notification when attempting to access these services," Sony said on the PSN Status website.

Traditionally, players couldn't play online or use third-party apps like Netflix or Crunchyroll during maintenance. However, now anyone that has signed into PSN before maintenance will be able to access online games and entertainment apps while Sony works on the network. If you're planning to use your PS4 during maintenance, though, make sure you've activated it as your Primary System for your account. You can do this in one of two ways:

First time sign-in to your PSN account: You will be prompted to activate the console during the Sign-In process.
After you have signed into your PSN Account: Select [PSN] > [Activate as Your Primary PS4] > [Activate].

The maintenance comes at a good time. Many users were having problems with PSN last night. Though Sony claimed that the issues were then resolved, they later admitted that problems remained.

These outages are a headache but pale in comparison to the problems PSN experienced over Christmas break. The service was down for several days due to DDoS attacks. These problems led Sony to extend PlayStation Plus subscriptions and also offer a one-time discount to all PSN users.