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The PlayStation Network recovers from an outage affecting players on PS5 and PS4

The PlayStation Network recovers from an outage affecting players on PS5 and PS4

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The outage began around 8:30AM ET

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A close-up of a white DualSense controller resting against a PlayStation 5 console.
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

Players experienced a number of issues with the PlayStation Network this morning, affecting the PS Store, PS Now cloud gaming services, as well as any games, apps, or features that require a network connection. While its main console services have been restored, PS Now is still listed as having issues.

PlayStation’s status page currently says “some services are experiencing issues.” Its last update about PS Now came at 9:41AM ET, and there’s still no timeline for restoration.

The problem didn’t seem to affect everyone, as some staffers at The Verge had PlayStation Plus errors while trying to play Elden Ring, but for others, things were working just fine. There might’ve been a regional aspect to the problem — everyone we checked in the Midwest and Canada had a fully operational PS5, but in New York, everyone got error messages. Among readers, reports were more scattered, there were people across the Midwest with issues, while some others were able to connect.

Some players reported issues with their PS Plus subscription and received errors when trying to launch games or access cloud saves. If you’re still getting that message, you shouldn’t sign up for another year, as it won’t help you get back online. It’s unclear whether these problems had anything to do with the just-released system update for PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 systems, as the people who were still online were able to update without issue.

PlayStation’s Japanese Twitter account also confirmed the network outage at the time. “PSN™ (including PlayStation® Store) may not be available at this time,” a translated version of the tweet reads. “We apologize for any inconvenience caused to our customers. We are conducting an investigation and restoration work, so please wait for a while.”

The Verge reached out to PlayStation with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

Update March 23rd 9:53AM ET: Added notes about regional reporting of the outage.

Update March 23rd 10:48AM ET: Updated the status and details of the outage.

Update March 23rd 12:44PM ET: Updated to add that all services, except for PS Now, have been restored.