The PlayStation Network Has Been Privy To An "External Intrusion" Bringing The Service Offline.

We can deal with a couple of days offline (even if it does hurt our productivity — we have games to review), but the current issues Sony's experiencing with the PSN are starting to sound worse and worse.

In its latest update on the PSN outage situation, Sony has cited an "external intrusion" as the reason for the shut-down. While the statement is extremely vague, it confirms that the network has been hacked in some way. What's not yet clear is the extent of the damage. This could signify anything from a malicious attack to attempted theft. The latter infinitely more worrying for consumers.

For the record: hacking group Anonymous has denied any involvement with the PSN's current status.

“An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services,” Patrick Seybold said on the PlayStation Blog.

“In order to conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services going forward, we turned off PlayStation Network & Qriocity services on the evening of Wednesday, April 20th.

“Providing quality entertainment services to our customers and partners is our utmost priority. We are doing all we can to resolve this situation quickly, and we once again thank you for your patience.

“We will continue to update you promptly as we have additional information to share.”

Adding to concerns is the lack of an estimated time of arrival for the service's return. Sony were originally signalling 48 hours for a fix, but the latest statement makes no mention of when the network might come back online.

A complete nightmare then: Sony will undoubtedly be under hard pressure from consumers, developers and publishers. Hopefully we get some more positive information over the next 24 hours.