PSN is down — PS5 and PS4 online service continues to struggle

PlayStation Store Holiday Sale
(Image credit: Sony)

PSN continues to be plagued with connectivity issues that have been affecting the online gaming service for the last four days.

The official PlayStation Network status page reports that “some services are experiencing issues” and specifically highlights “gaming and social” functionality as the key area being most impacted.  

“You might have difficulty launching games, apps or network features.” claims Sony, while also promising that it’s “working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.” 

The affected platforms are listed as PS5, PS4, PS3 and PS Vita — so essentially every single PlayStation device that can be connected to the internet. This tells us it’s definitely an issue on Sony’s end rather than a hardware one. 

According to Sony the issues first surfaced on Friday (February 26), however, gamers had taken to social media to complain about PSN problems at least 24 hours earlier. 

Not all aspects of PSN are experiencing problems. The PlayStation Store seems to be operating as normal as do PlayStation’s additional services: PlayStation Now, PlayStation Music, and PlayStation Video.

Judging by our most recent tests the service seems to be intermittent rather than completely unavailable. We were able to connect to games of Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Fall Guys without an issue, but struggled to get into a match of Rocket League without seriously long wait times.

It’s been a bad few days for playing your console online all around. Xbox also experienced online connectivity issues last week which prevented users from playing games online or accessing the Xbox store. 

Unfortunately in this scenario, as the problem is on Sony’s side, there’s nothing to do but wait for the issues to be resolved. As some games and services appear to be functioning as normal as of Monday (March 1), hopefully, we’re mostly out of the woods at this point. 

In the meantime, why not check out our roundup of the PS5 games we’re most excited to play in the coming months, and if you’re still after an elusive next-gen PlayStation then our guide for where to buy a PS5 should help. 

Rory Mellon
Entertainment Editor (UK)

Rory is an Entertainment Editor at Tom’s Guide based in the UK. He covers a wide range of topics but with a particular focus on gaming and streaming. When he’s not reviewing the latest games, searching for hidden gems on Netflix, or writing hot takes on new gaming hardware, TV shows and movies, he can be found attending music festivals and getting far too emotionally invested in his favorite football team.