PlayStation Network’s video services have gone down, causing annoying outages for users. The issue was initially reported by PlayStation at the end of September, but is still continuing for various PSN users.
PlayStation Network is no stranger to widespread outages, so while the occurrence may not be anything new for users of the service, it is still a frustrating inconvenience. Prior to this video outage, PSN was also affected by the widespread Cloudflare outage in August, which also took down Xbox Live, Amazon, and many other popular platforms that use the service. Now, almost a month later, the platform is dealing with another, albeit smaller, outage.
According to the official PlayStation Network Network Service Status website, players will be experiencing “some difficulty accessing PlayStation Video content.” Specifically, the platforms listed as being affected by this outage include the web browser and miscellaneous which means the various streaming apps such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. It is worth mentioning that while the outage has persisted since September 29, it appears that it is not a widespread issue. Several Twitter users have shared their run ins with the outage, although there does not seem to be the same volume of mentions about the issue as there would be for an all-around outage.
A quick Twitter search shows that while, yes, there are other users experiencing the issue, there are also others who are reporting no interruptions in their service. Other tweets hint that these outages may have something to do with the unifying of all Sony and PlayStation accounts under one PlayStation Network login, and that the issue is fixable. PlayStation has not publicly confirmed this to be the case, so users should be aware that this may not resolve their issues with the service.
With November’s launch of the PS5 approaching, it appears that PlayStation is rolling out several PSN changes to build on the next-gen experience, which is commendable. Again, neither PlayStation nor Sony have stated if this outage has to do with the above mentioned account unification, but if this the case, then not all of these changes will be smooth sailing for users. PlayStation has grand plans for their next-generation, and if these plans include more additions like cross-gen transferable save data, then perhaps the growing pains will prove to be worth it in the long run.
Source: PlayStation Network Service Status, EnlightenedBSG/Twitter