PlayStation Network down in some areas right now

If you're having problems accessing the PlayStation Network, then here's some good news: it's not just you. The bad news, of course, is that Sony is experiencing some problems with PSN connectivity at the moment, and these issues seem to be affecting aspects that are most important to gamers. To make matters worse, we're not sure how long it's going to take before these issues are resolved.

A quick glance over at Sony's PSN service status page shows us that Gaming and Social services are currently experiencing issues. Other PSN services, such as the PlayStation Store, account management, and PlayStation Now, are all up and running, which is encouraging. Still, you'll need those Gaming and Social services to be able to play games online, so if you're logging on to do some gaming, don't be surprised if some (or all) won't let you connect.

These problems are present on both PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, but like all problems of this nature, there's no certainty that you'll actually encounter them if you try to take a game online. For now, the status page doesn't actually tell us much of anything, only that PlayStation engineers are on the case and working to fix the problem. "You may have some difficulty launching games, applications, or online features," the message reads. "Our engineers are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, and we thank you for your patience."

Things unfortunately don't get any clearer once we jump over to the Ask PlayStation Twitter account, which says much the same thing about the problems. From here we simply have to play the waiting game, as it could be any amount of time before service is restored. That will be little comfort to those who are waiting to sign into the PlayStation Network, but there's not much else to be done at the moment.

In any case, we'll keep an ear to the ground to listen for any updates on these issues. Once Sony has fixed the problems, we'll update this post, so stay tuned for that.