690°

PSN Maintenance Extended, Downtime Even Hitting Those That Had Signed in Before

Kicking off the new year with a bang, Sony decided to bring down the PSN for 12 hours while they did some maintenance. But if you signed in since Tuesday, you were set to be able to still log on (just not to the store), and it was all going to be back to normal on 8:00 pm PST (9:00 pm MT, 10:00 pm CT, 11:00 pm ET). Unfortunately, the PSN is still down and some people who signed in since Tuesday aren’t able to get on.
-PSLS

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playstationlifestyle.net
dbjj120884110d ago

Guhhhh, I hate when I finally sit down to play and there's maintenance. Those Call of Duty trolls aren't gonna shoot themselves ya know....

TheGamerDood4110d ago

still down on east cost @11:21pm -_-

TheFreak4110d ago (Edited 4110d ago )

It's still down for me, but a friend of mine can sign in. He is in the same city as me. Really weird.

irepbtown4109d ago

Works for me, I live in England.

However if it's a real bugger, go to Blockbusters (or similar) and rent a single player game. They're pretty cheap to rent and bags of fun (depending on which one you get).

Just a thought for anyone not able to sign in.

FriedGoat4109d ago

Lol better get to Blockbuster quick, before the buildings are demolished.

AAACE54109d ago

Cant log in either. Midwest.

TheGamerDood4109d ago (Edited 4109d ago )

......blip......life! It's working for me at least.

pixelsword4109d ago

Big Secret #1:

If you have the 60Gb, you can still play PS2 online. That's what I did when they were down during the whole hacking incident.

jadenkorri4109d ago

I can sign in, been able to all week, no issues, thou my friends cant, 1 lives locally to me the other in Wisconsin.

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showtimefolks4110d ago

for me it really doesn't matter as i am more of single player story kind of gamer.

after what happened to PSN i rather them take 10 extra hrs to fix what they need than for PSN to be down for weeks or months

patience my fellow gamers

Liefx4110d ago

Sure we have to wait sometimes for a free service. But if we do pay, we still get the service (which is what you pay for) PLUS (see what I did there) free* games to play when the online isn't working.

Christopher4109d ago

From a technical standpoint, having SEN (not just PSN, but all of SEN) down in this manner is bad business and a sign of poor procedures when it comes to doing rolled out updates. Taking down the central element to an infrastructure should not take more than a few hours, let alone more than a day. This is removing the ability for people to use services they have subscribed to (Qriocity and the like) and is just poor business design.

Sony needs to improve on this next gen. Problems like this will not be looked upon favorably if they still exist and have not had the attention they need to make things easier for their customers.

I get the whole, you don't pay for it so it's okay. But, from a business and technology solutions perspective, that's not enough and they really are capable of setting up something that doesn't require this much downtime.

BrianC62344109d ago

"From a technical standpoint, having SEN (not just PSN, but all of SEN) down in this manner is bad business and a sign of poor procedures when it comes to doing rolled out updates. Taking down the central element to an infrastructure should not take more than a few hours, let alone more than a day."

The problem with computers is you always have a chance that something doesn't work. They probably ran into problems. Nothing is perfect. It's better that it isn't up than it's up and buggy or has security problems.

Christopher4109d ago (Edited 4109d ago )

***The problem with computers is you always have a chance that something doesn't work.***

First of all, this isn't just 'computers', it's a network related issue. There's a lot more to it than just that, including software.

Second, that's why you go from development to testing and then to production (sometimes even a staging process before production). Even when doing hardware updates, you do testing to remove all potential for issues.

Third, this initial planned downtime was 12 hours. My argument is that it shouldn't take that long. How long is XBL down during updates? How long is Google login down during updates? How long is Netflix down during updates? How long is Amazon.com down during updates? How long is Steam down during updates? You see where I'm going with this?

Fourth, don't think that just because Sony provides good content and service that they can't be better. Honestly, if Sony got rid of 12-hour downtimes, don't you think everyone here would see that as a massive benefit? So, why would saying that they update their process to get rid of these is it a negative? Because any negative must be from someone who is Anti-Sony and only wants to see Sony fail? No, that's not how progress is made. Realize that Sony needs to improve on so many things because anything that is a negative now is only going to be even more of a negative when they put our their next console with a supposed improved infrastructure to support more than what we have now.

caseh4109d ago

This is beyond a joke now, its been down for over 24 hours yet I have a mate who lives a few doors down from me who is logged in fine and has been for most of the day.

Its either UP or DOWN, it shouldn't be working for some and not for others, all the people defending them saying 'oh its important for security etc' are missing the fact that they've clearly f*cked something up thats now been followed with an update on the PSN twitter feed to the effect of 'Sorry, maintenance has been pushed back again until tomorrow morning at least'

Notice the omission of a concrete timescale there, bunch of clowns.

rainslacker4109d ago

@cg

World of Warcraft has had these same kinds of issues for years, every Tuesday in fact. Even worse when it's a big update roll out.

These things are an inconvenience, and definitely annoying, but for the most part consumers suck it up and deal with it.

Bad for business? Sure. Obviously their engineers aren't sitting there eating donuts and drinking coffee in the break room while the company is losing lots of money. Something didn't go as expected. This was a fairly large change to their whole network, sometimes you just can't test for that kind of stuff. Even beta tests of online functionality never show all the possible end results.

The biggest complaint I might have is that companies (not just Sony) don't really address why these things take longer, and when they do they are vague about the details, thus leaving things up to wild speculation, and leaving the customer hanging wondering when it's going to be fixed.

Christopher4109d ago (Edited 4109d ago )

***World of Warcraft has had these same kinds of issues for years, every Tuesday in fact. Even worse when it's a big update roll out. ***

That is correct. WoW _had_ these issues when it released back in 2004. All of that tied to massive amounts of database data being managed and processed in that manner. Someone also got fired because of the issues they had (the person in charge got canned and they looked for someone else two weeks after the game's release).

So...

Again, how is it that other companies that handle similar (if not a heck of a lot more) data and connections to users through such data are able to keep their services up for longer than PSN each year and not go down for regular maintenance like PSN has over the last few years?

With PSN downtime being extended to tomorrow, are we really still questioning that they obviously have issues with the manner in which they decide to perform updates? Do we not recognize that they are not testing enough to account for these issues. Do they not have test environments that replicate the hardware and software currently on production and are managed in a similar manner? I know this is a massive network of computers and processes, but if others can do it so can Sony.

rainslacker4109d ago

@cg
In response to wow, whoever they hired to replace that guy didn't do much to alleviate the issues as they're still prevalent. I was only citing it as an example of what they do, and how sometimes(at least every 5-6 weeks), their service goes down for longer than anticipated, sometimes resulting in fully unplayable days.

To the topic at hand

It's hard to say honestly. It may come down to that Sony slapped together much of their network to perform in ways it was never meant to be. As such everything has been a band-aid fix which is simply culminating in longer down times as the years go by.

When it comes to Sony's networks, I think there is just too much unknown among the masses that don't really know how it works. The comments I see on here seem to me people(not necessarily you) that don't understand how complex these systems are.

For now, we don't know what the issue is, and I see a lot of people jumping the gun. I'm sure Sony does have all that stuff you mention, but without knowing the underlying causes of why these issues are appearing, it just makes it into a fan boy discussion about how much they suck.

The only real viable option would seem for them to start from scratch. It's something I'm sure they are looking into when the migration to PS4 comes along. It can be seen as early as last year when they started migrating over to SEN instead of having PSN separate.

I'd personally like to see them move to a more streamlined approach. It would be a massive benefit as you say, and it apparently is like that on Live.

My original post was not about whether the down time is good or not...just that people should understand that Sony isn't sitting on it's laurels when it comes to resolving this issue. I'm sure their engineers are working at this very moment to get the problem resolved. It is not an issue of Sony sucks, but more they don't inform people of what the issues are, and that everyone chimes in with their own speculation without knowing the actual problems, both major and minor.

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4110d ago Replies(24)
nunley334110d ago

i've been signed in since the maintenance and after it started even. I've been passing the time playing dungeon hunter and uncharted 2 both online. And other friends have been playing their cod like they do every night. Some of those aren't even aware of the maintenance i'm sure, no big deal at all. You just can't go into the store, account management or Home is all.

Hicken4109d ago

Same here. I've had no issues since I first heard of it. I HAVE, however, had friends affected by it.

Can't enter the store, but I'm otherwise able to connect just fine.

Downtown boogey4109d ago

What's wrong with us?
It's not like corner trapping enemies without getting instantly killed is easy or anything

miDnIghtEr20C_SfF4109d ago ShowReplies(2)
Tetsujin4109d ago

http://community.us.playsta...

This site is from Sony directly, as of 10:30 am CST maintenance is extended (again) to 4 pm CST 1-18-13. It has been updated regularly so you can go here if you need an update.

stage884109d ago

No problem at all for me. I've been on gaming online all day on PSN.

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ftwrthtx4110d ago

Hopefully they will make the store work faster and maybe even organize our download list. 6 years of downloads are a lot to sort through using this old system.

flyingmunky4109d ago

I noticed that as well when I tried to 'find' all of my downloads that would be compatible with my vita. Took forever to shift through a history that has a couple hundred downloads in a single list.

D3stinySm4sher4110d ago

I've been unable to sign in all day, yet I was on yesterday.
My roommates? TWO of them are logged in, on the same internet connection, both playing Mass Effect 3 online right now, while I can't even sign into PSN.

Freakin' weird, man. Disappointing if I'm gonna be stuck offline all night, too, while I get taunted by roommates who are oddly able to log in while I'm not. =P

kneon4110d ago

It must be a regional thing, I've been on 5 times today playing ME3 online without any issue, and I just logged in again now and it's still working fine.

kingmushroom4110d ago

lol one disagree haha Someone is JEALOUS!!!!

TrendyGamers4110d ago

I wonder what caused the extension?

banjadude4110d ago

I'm hoping they are doing fixes to the PS Store (load time wise, hopefully).

rainslacker4109d ago

I doubt changing the PS Store would require them to take down the whole network.

Hellsvacancy4110d ago (Edited 4110d ago )

I was goning to play Portal 2 tonight, co-op, with my buddy. He could log into the Steam servers (PS3) I couldnt, thought we would give BF3 ago, he could sign in to the EA servers, I couldnt, he only lives afew miles away from me aswel, I thought it seemed odd, I could sign into the PSN, but play nothin online, oh well I thought, might aswel start playin Mass Effect

This sorta thing always happens when im off work, I really want that Portal 2 platinum

Show all comments (134)
170°

Ranking the Devil May Cry Series

VGChartz's Mark Nielsen: "Upon finally finishing Devil May Cry 5 recently - after it spent several years on my “I’ll play that soon” list - I considered giving it a fittingly-named Late Look article. However, considering that this was indeed the final piece I was missing in the DMC puzzle, I decided to instead take this opportunity to take a look back at the entirety of this genre-defining series and rank the entries. What also made this a particularly tempting notion was that while most high-profile series have developed fairly evenly over time, with a few bumps on the road, the history of Devil May Cry has, at least in my eyes, been an absolute roller coaster, with everything from total disasters to action game gold."

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vgchartz.com
VersusDMC7h ago

First to last for me...3,4,5,1,2.

VersusDMC5h ago

Me leaving it out should be telling of my thoughts on it. Better than 2 as a DMC game.

Still a good game though.

Friendlygamer6h ago

3,1,4,5 to me, never played 2. 5 gameplay is amazing but level design was really disappointing to me, just a bunch of plain arenas, the story felt like a worse written rehash of the 3rd and the charater models looked weird ( specially the ladies ). Another problem with 5 was that there was not enough content for 3 charaters so I could never really familiarize with any of them

monkey6025h ago(Edited 5h ago)

2.
Dmc.
4.
5.
1.
3.

God DMC2 was an awful game.
And in case this isn't obvious it goes worst to best

Yui_Suzumiya4h ago

1 and DmC. The rest are unimportant.

DarXyde4h ago

Order changes depending on your focus. I tend to focus on gameplay/fun factor, so...

5, 3, 1, 4, 2.

I really didn't like 4 but commend Dante's weapon diversity. The retreading of old ground was pretty unacceptable to me.

But even then... Still more enjoyable than 2 for me

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90°

10 Weirdest Video Games of All Time

Plenty of unforgettable games have completely messed up their players throughout the years, all the way back from the PS1 days to the dark recesses of the modern internet.

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culturedvultures.com
JonTheGod1d 11h ago

Why are the Katamari games not on the list??

80°

Tales Of Graces Ƒ Retro Review – Holding Out For a Hero

Gary Green said: Namco Bandai heard the call of many fans asking for the PlayStation release of Tales of Graces which was originally released seemingly exclusively for the Wii back in 2009. If you’re acquainted with the Tales series then Graces f won’t be something entirely new to you, yet if you’re a newcomer then you’ll find a plethora of gameplay mechanics and nuances that distinguish this series from other JRPGs. While the game finds itself following the traditional archetype of JRPGs, such as a somewhat clichéd story, Graces has something to offer to both veterans and newcomers alike.

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pslegends.com
GoodGuy093d ago

Odd this and the xillia games still haven't gotten remasters yet.