The PlayStation Store is now online and available in North America and Europe. Check out the store now for the first Store update since the PSN went down back in April. Sony is also working on the Welcome Back package, which is currently in the final stages of testing and will be available to download very soon.
Sony Corporation and Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) announced today that Sony Network Entertainment International (SNEI, the company) will fully restore all PlayStation Network services today in the Americas, Europe/PAL territories and Asia, excluding Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea.
The rest of the PlayStation Network comes back online this week, including the PlayStation Store. Earlier today, Sony Network Entertainment International announced that they will fully restore all PlayStation Network services in the Americas, Europe/PAL territories and Asia, excluding Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea by the end of this week.
Despite rumors last week, the PlayStation Store will not be returning this week. In fact, the PSN is unavailable again due to scheduled maintenance. The maintenance window will run until 5pm Pacific Time, as Sony aim to restore all PSN services by the end of the month.
According to Gamasutra, Sony has informed developer partners that the PlayStation Store will return on May 24th 2011. The PlayStation Store has been offline since the PlayStation Network was attacked last month. Sony plans to do two content pushes per week for the next two weeks to catch up with the backlog of content, the first of which will be on May 24th.
The PlayStation Network relaunch is now under way across the world. Kazuo Hirai has made an official announcement about the relaunch, and apologizes to the consumers for the PSN and Qoricity service outage. You can see the announcement below.
The PlayStation Network was originally scheduled to return online last week, but with more attacks, this was delayed further. This week, rumors have suggested that the PSN won’t be back online until May 31st 2011, but Sony has posted a new update on the situation. The new update indicates the PSN could return online within the next few days.
As you may know, Sony has begun the process of restoring the service through internal testing of the new system. It looks like the initial estimate of bring the PSN online this week may be delayed a little to allow Sony to further test the new network changes. A update from Sony was released earlier today to update games on the current progress (see below).
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Sony will be offering gamers free identity theft protection for 1 year in both America and Europe (through different providers), to help protect users if they personal data is used as result of the PSN breach. In addition to identity theft protection, PSN users will also have the opportunity to select two PS3 games from a list of five, as well as offering PSP users the opportunity to choose two games from a list of four.
Today, the global network and security teams at Sony Network Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment began the final stages of internal testing of the new system, an important step towards restoring PlayStation Network and Qriocity services.
