PSN was down, and some are still having trouble — here’s what we know about this weekend’s outage

Okay folks, all the outage graphs continue to fall. I suspect a few people will still have hiccups for a while, but it looks like the recovery is nearly complete. It’s late into the night where I am, so I’m going to log off, and I hope that you’re all back online and having all the fun in the world for the rest of your day, wherever you are.

Okay, I’m seeing a HUGE fall in reports on Downdetector in both the US and Japan. Our pal Idris in the comments here, who spoke to Sony support before, is back online. And I can see in our dashboard that the number of you viewing this report live has dropped dramatically in a short time. So I’m thinking we’re getting back online properly this time…

I’ve added a little puzzle game to the top of this page, since if you’re here I assume you can’t play the game you really want to play. It’s a puzzle of an Astro Bot image for PlayStation’s 30th anniversary, to help you remember the good times.

I strongly suspect that tips like this are placebos — my guess is that this person just happened to get back in after trying this, rather than these actions being the cause of why they’re back in. But I’ll share it with you out of interest:

The average response in Japan is chiller than the average response elsewhere, I will say.

I agree with this message about the system status! Pick a struggle!

Another vote from someone on Reddit who found that the update didn’t help them:

Idra in our comments says that the updating trick didn’t work for them, but even more notable is they said they spoke to PlayStation Support and received this quote:

“We don’t have a set timeframe for when the problem will be 100% resolved; we simply ask for your patience. Thank you.”

Just received this ad on Reddit. Read the room, guys.

Oh, I did check, the Japanese PlayStation Status page says the same as the US version: all systems go.

X continues to fill with posts from Japanese people who can’t get online and have no idea why, though…

You can tell Japan is just coming online to find that many people there can’t actually get online (on PSN) — here’s the Japan-specific graph for PSN on Downdetector, spiking hugely right now…

Dan Shepherd, in the comments on this article, says that checking for an update on the console and applying it worked to get back online. I mentioned earlier that I was skeptical of this being a fix because I’m online and yet my console says I need to apply the latest update — but hey, if it worked for Dan, maybe it’ll work for you.

And please add to the comments here if it does work!

I’m noticing that X is particularly filling up with Japanese users who are presumably just waking up on a Sunday ready for gaming, and are finding that they’re locked out. And as one message notes below, the Status page says everything’s fine — they slept through the part where it was ‘officially’ down…

Speaking of Downdetector, that graph continues to stay steady — a pretty significant percentage of people seem to still be locked out, for whatever reason.

Another sign that it’s not about location: commenter ‘Kira’ on Downdetector says “Finally servers up in Texas!” — answered immediately by cries of “false” and “Lie. Ignore this guy.”

As noted by a Mod in the Reddit megathread, the best advice seems to be to keep trying, unfortunately — there’s still no official further word from PlayStation on why some people might be having issues, while someone else in literally the same house as them might not be.

It’s possible they’re ramping the system back up slowly and not allowing access for everyone — though most online Status pages would call that ‘recovering’ or something like that, but PlayStation continues to say everything is fully hunky-dory.

And, incidentally, I’m based in the UK and so is this person, so I really don’t think the difference between being on and offline is location-based.

I saw a post floating around on X that I won’t link to because I don’t think it’s accurate, promising that if you’re having trouble getting online, you can fix it with a software update. The reason I don’t think it’s accurate is that my PS5 isn’t up do date, and I’m now back online!

I’m on software 26.01-12.70.00.01 — and my machine is telling me there’s an update available. I’m not touching that, in case updating actually breaks things for me, since I’m one of the ones lucky enough to be back online.

There are lots of comments from people on Downdetector from people identifying where they’re from that’s still down — Pennsylvania, Ohio, Ontario, and so on — but location doesn’t seem to be the trigger, as this Reddit comment from someone with two consoles in one house makes particularly clear:

Here is a fresh image of the PlayStation Status page…

…but here is fresh commentary from Reddit…

The end of Downdetector’s graph has gone from consistently falling (for the second time) to rising again (for the second time)…

The most recent post on X from PlayStation is inviting you to play Fortnite to get new skins — I just hope you’re actually able to get online to do it…

Still plenty of people saying it’s down for them, sadly.

The Downdetector.com graph is back to dropping, after a brief pause, though commenters are in various states of disruption.

“All my stuff is loading it shows my friends it’s says I’m online but fun cod won’t work,” says ‘Jirdoon’.

“still cant get in but their site says everything’s up wth,” says ‘jsafkerjr44’.

“imma make a digiorno pizza in the meantime,” says ‘mario’, wisely.

“I can stream games or play fortnite ok but I can’t play online ps plus games or games like call of duty online,” says John Burrows in our own comments section here.

Overwatch 2 has been working fine for me, at least. Got walked all over once, nailed it once. About par for me. Obviously the problem in the first game was my team…

It’s also worth nothing that on Downdetector.com there has been a bit of a rise in reports after the big drops during the recovery…

Sony’s Status page has been updated. All green.

That previous outage eventually saw Sony give all affected PlayStation Plus members an additional five days of service free of charge as compensation.

I’d be very surprised if there was any similar handout today, given that the outage hasn’t lasted for long and appears to be coming to an end. But we’ll keep our eyes on what’s happening in case it’s not fully over yet.

This is of course far from the first PSN outage — and it’s a long way off being the biggest. Well, unless it goes on for a lot longer…

Last February, the service was down for more than 24 hours, due to what Sony eventually said was an “operational issue” with network services.

On that occasion, the company came in for a huge amount of flak for its lack of announcements about what was happening. At the time of writing, there’s been no note on X/Twitter about this one, either.

On Reddit, there’s a 300-plus comment PSN outage megathread, with many posters complaining about the modern nature of online-only games.

“What makes it worse is how random it feels. You can sit down ready to play, and out of nowhere you’re getting connection errors with no warning and no clear idea when it’ll be fixed. It just kills the whole vibe, especially if you only had a little time to play,” says one user, Used_Debt_9763.

Another, SillyWillySaxon, says, “Outage has made me realise just how many games are an online service. I can’t access career mode on something as simple as EA Sports PGA Tour. I feel so vulnerable with most of my games being digitally downloaded 😓”

Let’s hope that the PSN’s return in the last few minutes holds up — not all recoveries from outages go smoothly, after all…