PlayStation Network

As we’ve already heard this week, Phil Spencer — the man in charge of all things Xbox — recently took part in an extensive interview with the New York Times. Along with revealing that the Xbox Series consoles are the best selling in the brand’s 20-year history Spencer discussed a number of other ideas and one in particular caught our eye: cross-platform moderation.

A long-awaited feature is now available to PlayStation Network users: account name changes.

So long, Xx_DaNkGaMeR_xX. It’s been swell, SwagLord6969. That’s right: after over a decade, Sony will finally allow players the ability to change their usernames on its online service.

You’ll probably have noticed that connecting to GT Sport’s servers was almost impossible for the last couple of days. Users were unable to log in to race online, or even to access their save data. It’s a little awkward for an online-focused title, on the day the series celebrated its 20th birthday.

If you’re just settling in to some well-earned time off and hoping to get some GT Sport action, we’ve got a little bit of bad news.

Aside from the new Gran Turismo merchandise released at last weekend’s PlayStation Experience, there wasn’t much for racing game fans to get excited about from the show. An interview with PlayStation CEO Shawn Layden, however, revealed something that should get everyone’s attention.

It’s that time of the year again, when Sony announces its annual Easter sale on the PlayStation store, and there are some great deals to be had for all you racing fanatics out there.

Since the PlayStation 3 encryption keys were published by hackers back in 2011, both GT5 and GT6 have been targeted by users looking to modify the games beyond their intended parameters. Although “hacks” have always been a part of video gaming and even the GT series, it now takes on a new seriousness, as it threatens the integrity and fairness of online competitions.

Sony has announced a lengthy scheduled maintenance event for the PlayStation Network. The downtime begins at 20:00 UTC/GMT today (March 4th), and is expected to last more than 14 hours, until approximately 10:00 UTC/GMT on Monday, March 5th (convert this to your local timezone here).

Since Kazunori Yamauchi announced the next Gran Turismo 5 update was being held back due to ongoing problems with the PlayStation Network, GT fans have had special reason to closely follow news about the service. Fortunately, Sony has taken yet another important step forward, bringing the PSN Store back online today in the U.S. and Europe.

Kazunori Yamauchi is back to posting messages on Twitter Sunday afternoon, and he offered a bit of information on what’s holding up the next Gran Turismo 5 update. According to translations by our own SHIRAKAWA Akira, Polyphony Digital is waiting until the PlayStation Network finally “settles down” before publishing the next revision of the game.

It looks like the long wait is nearly over – Sony will begin restoring PlayStation Network services around the world over the next 24 hours. A new PS3 firmware update is already available and will be required to connect to the network when it finally does come back online in your location (SCEA is maintaing a service map for U.S. users here). Everyone will, of course, be prompted to change their PSN passwords upon signing in. Watch the video above from Sony president Kazuo Hirai for more information.

As you’ve probably noticed, it’s been nearly seven days now since Sony last offered up a “this week” time frame for the restoration of PlayStation Network services. While there’s still no real end to the downtime in sight, Sony has at least acknowledged they’re probably going to miss that soft deadline with their latest blog post:

Sony held a press conference in Tokyo today to provide more details about the PlayStation Network outage and their plans moving forward. There’s a lot of information of in the press release below, but the best news – for those of you eager to back online with GT5, at least – is they expect online gaming services to return “this week”.

Yikes – the ongoing PlayStation Network outage that started last week has gone from bad to worse. Sony has announced that private information associated with PSN accounts may have been exposed to attackers who gained access to the PlayStation Network. The company has posted an official announcement with more information and compiled a list of frequently asked questions about what happened and what you can do to protect yourself (they’ve also added this page with a bit more information, thanks BTK!).

What started as downtime in the PlayStation Network last Thursday has gradually snowballed into a very serious problem for gamers. The inability to connect to PSN has rendered Gran Turismo 5’s online features and races useless, with angst is growing in our forums and around the world.