Sony has said that the PlayStation Network should be up and running at 2am PST, therefore we thought we would tell you the times which this equates to around the world, however all the times which we mention are completely reliant on whether Sony manage to stick to the plans which they’ve pledged. So let’s get started:

If you live in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver or anywhere else which comes under the PST (Pacific Standard Time) time zone the PSN should be back up and running at 2:00am, if you’re located somewhere which falls into the Eastern Standard Time zone (places such as New York, Miami and Detroit etc) it should be once again live at 5.00am.

So that’s you folks’ in North America sorted, but what about Europe? Well London residents and everyone else in the UK should be able to access the PSN at 10.00am, carrying on east French and Spanish residents should be online at around 11.00am. Other areas which many of our readers come from include Hong Kong and Sydney, the PSN should go live in these areas at 18.00 and 21.00 respectively.

If you check out this link you can see a complete list of locations around the world and when the PSN should go live – we guess time will tell whether these turn out to be accurate, they should be as long as Sony’s work goes as smoothly as planned.

When did the PlayStation Network come back online for you? (Please remember to state where in the world you signed in from)

Sony used Twitter to reveal this news and we’ve embedded the tweet from the official PlayStation Twitter below. This was tweeted less than an hour ago (at the time of publishing this brief article) and as you can see no reason has been given for the cancellation, but it does clearly suggest that they will be rescheduling the maintenance.

Update: Tomorrow’s scheduled PSN maintenance has been postponed. We’ll update everyone once it’s rescheduled. Until then, game on.

— PlayStation (@PlayStation) March 1, 2012

Ever since Sony’s nightmare of a situation in mid-2011, where the PlayStation Network went down for a considerable amount of days, we’ve seen Sony voluntarily take down the network multiple times to take carry out maintenance. Don’t get us wrong it’s great to see Sony’s team taking a proactive approach to PSN stability and security, however we have to say that the downtime this causes is an annoyance to say the least.

We raised our concerns over the frequent PSN downtime in a recent article which can be seen here. Basically we think that Sony’s next-generation console would benefit greatly from less frequent outages, something which Microsoft seem to have gotten right with the Xbox 360.

As we hear of a new date for the maintenance we will keep you posted, for now make the most of the PlayStation Network while it’s live and share what plans you had made to keep yourself entertained while the PSN was supposed to be down.

The company has officially announced that all PlayStation accounts will soon be renamed as Sony Entertainment Network accounts. According to an article over at Digital Spy, Sony is rebranding the service in an attempt to offer a “comprehensive network platform” of offerings that includes games, music, movies, and other media content.

Sony is beginning to send out emails to its subscribers and stated that the change is part of Sony’s goal in offering customers a “unique digital entertainment offering”. The email continued that a number of activities started back in September, and will continue with the alignment of PSN with the Sony Entertainment Network.

For now the change is with the name only accept for some minor changes to the terms of service, and users of the service will see no changes to their password and username details. The rebranding will be arriving on the PlayStation 3 and the recently released PlayStation Vita via software updates this coming Wednesday February 8th.

For the time being the change will not be applied to the PlayStation Portable. Have you received the email from Sony yet about the changes?

Firmware update 3.73 for PS3 has been out since October 18, 2011, therefore we half expected Sony to launch the highly anticipated 4.0 update when the network came back online a few hours ago, did you? With a major software update coming to Xbox 360 soon you would have thought that a high priority for Sony would be to further improve its console before Black Friday and the Holiday Season.

If you check out a few of our recent PS3 firmware update4.0-related articles you can see there are high expectations for its release, we can pretty much guarantee that it won’t bring cross-game chat, but that’s not a big deal for everyone. A recent discussion on our website saw huge feedback from our readers, most people want the firmware update to bring a new web browser (preferably Chrome-based), improved XMB and in-game music – how about you?

Perhaps Sony will be rolling out the update soon and the recent down-time was related to this, but as a PS3 gamer I hate the way such secrecy has to surround update plans, why not adopt Microsoft’s approach and tell us that firmware update 4.0 is being developed and then list some of the features and improvements they are planning to bring to PS3? Also when maintenance is scheduled why not explain why it is taking place, this would keep PS3 gamers far more patient during hours of inaccessibility….

Did you think the November 17 PSN outage may be related to new features and improvements being implement to enhance your PS3 experience?

The blog post clearly states that on Thursday, November 17th from roughly 8am PST there will be no access to the PlayStation Store (PS3 & PSP), PlayStation Network Account Registration or PlayStation Network Account Management. Also you will not be able to sign into the PlayStation Network from us.playstation.com, that said, some gamers may find that they are still able to play games online during the maintenance, but don’t count on it.

Sony seem to think that the maintenance will last up to 14 hours, which means it should finish at roughly 10pm PST, as we have readers from all around the world we thought we would do the hard work and convert this to different time zones for you. Check out the image below, if it is too small head over to this link.

Frustratingly for our UK gamers (and people in similar time zones) it means that it looks like Thursday night will not be full of gaming as the downtime will start at approximately 6pm and finish at roughly 8am – however Sony has stated that some gamers may still have access to online games – that could be great news for MW3, FIFA and BF3 gamers.

We really hope that when everything is back up and running a new firmware update will be live for the PS3, however we doubt it, but if we do hear anything you will be the first to know!

Do you mind frequent PSN downtime when it’s for maintenance?

Sony Europe announced the news, which is sure to get many gamers wanting to order the device before it becomes available in Europe on February 22nd. As from November 30th the portable gaming console will be available for pre-order, not only that but there will be two redeemable gift packs available, one of which gamers will get with each pre-order. What they get will depend on their location.

As PlayStation Blog details in their article, the first gift pack will contain a redeem code for an exclusive PS Vita avatar for PSN, early access to Frobisher Says!, PS Vita items for PlayStation Home including a bag, trainers, headphones, sunglasses and a t-shirt and €5 discount on any one of these PS Vita games; Escape Plan, Hustle Kings, Super Stardust Delta or Little Deviants.

The UK and European gift pack also comes with a pair of ‘PS Vita Blue’ in-ear headphones. The second gift pack is only available to gamers in Greece, South Africa, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Spain and France who will be given the option to swap the headphones for a PS Vita branded wallet instead, as well as all the other goodies.

Pre-orders can begin to be placed at selected game retailing stores as of November 30th where a deposit must be paid. Where you are in the world determines whether or not you get the choice of gift pack, then come release day the balance can be paid and the PS Vita and all the exclusive content is officially yours. Will you be pre-ordering the PS Vita?

The football management simulation was made available on the PSN at 5pm today and would normally cost £13.99 or €17.99 but for this special introductory price. The game will appeal to those that are interested in pick-up-and-play games and allow football fans the ultimate job of being a football manager for any of the top clubs in the world, all from the comfort of their own couch.

Much like its closest and arguably more successful rival, Football Manager 2012, features a huge player and team database including teams from top footballing nations and includes both cup and league competitions. It also features real-time graphics for contract negotiations, a brand new memory system which allows staff and players to recollect controversial decisions you may have made, a unique leveling up system for characters and an accurate tactical match engine. A trailer of the game can be viewed at CVG.

What’s also very appealing about this football management simulation is it will cost a fraction of what its closest rival does. However, Football Manager 2012 offers a lot more for the money in terms of content, realism and authenticity. It has a far more complex engine and lets players choose from any team from over 50 different nations. It has an easy to use intelligent interface and a brand new tutorial. Premier Manager 2012 will no doubt be entertaining and a great alternative but will only ever be a poor man’s Football Manager in our eyes.

Will you be downloading Premier Manager 2012?

According to this recent EuroGamer article it looks like the downtime will occur between 4.00pm and 6.00pm GMT, however Sony has warned us that it could potentially last longer whilst testing is carried out – sadly Sony did not go into detail regarding just why this maintenance has been scheduled.

During the outage you will not be able to sign in to PSN, access account management, browse the PlayStation Store or sign in via the SonyEntertainmentNetwork – let’s just hope the maintenance and testing goes smoothly as we doubt PS3 gamers will be impressed with an entire evening without PSN access.

Obviously any downtime is frustrating for gamers, but let’s not forget that it at least shows that the guys over at Sony are keeping on top of things. We just wonder why they felt 4.00pm was a good time to start it, surely it would be far less disruptive if the maintenance was carried out whilst people were sleeping.

As and when we hear more about today’s PlayStation Network maintenance we will keep you posted, hopefully things will go smoothly and people will have full access to the network at 6.00pm, if not we are sure we will be bombarded with complaints directed towards Sony.

How will you keep yourself entertained whilst the PSN is down?

Sony has admitted on its PlayStation Blog that attempts have been made on PSN and Sony Entertainment. Philip Reitinger who is Sony’s Chief Information Security Officer took to the blog and stated hackers had used “very large sets of sign-in IDs and passwords”. They had brief access to 60,000 PSN accounts, and 33,000 on Sony Online Entertainment.

The hacking attempts happened from Friday through to Monday, and hackers managed to verify sign-in IDs and passwords. Sony stressed that no credit card information was at risk with the attack, and the company locked down the accounts once confirming the attempts were unauthorized.

Reitinger said the data “came from another source and not from our Networks” and the company was “continuing to investigate the extent of unauthorized activity on any of these accounts”. The company said it would send emails to the affected customers whose accounts had been locked down.

The statement added “We will work with any users whom we confirm have had unauthorized purchases made to restore amounts in the PSN/SEN or SOE wallet.” Sony are at least quickly keeping users up to date, as that was one of the biggest complaints during all the problems earlier this year was the lack of information.

Hit the PlayStation Blog for the full statement about the latest hacking. Has your account been locked down?

This is starting to get a regular occurrence now, and from what we can remember will be the third time that the PlayStation Network has gone down this month. However, the difference is that we know in advance – even though that will come as no consolation to gamers in the UK, as this is the busiest time for the network.

We have to understand that Sony needs to run maintenance on PSN, but you would have thought that they would have chosen a time when the system was not in as much demand? The issue is this is about the time that Battlefield 3 Beta Open goes like in the UK – seems like bad timing to us. They should have done this yesterday, because tomorrow is also out of the question, as FIFA 12 will be released to the public.

However, there is a way to get around this issue, and is pretty simple really. The problem will only affect signing in and also registration; all you have to do is sign in before 5PM GMT and you will still be able to play online with your friends – which is needed with BF3 later today. Just one more little thing to add, Sony is saying that the maintenance is expected to go on until 2100 hours, so even more reason to sign in before 1700GMT.