PSN Experiencing Connectivity Issues Due to Heavy Network Traffic

Game Rant

By Anthony Taormina

Published Jan 7, 2015

PlayStation users are once again reporting problems connecting to the PSN, and Sony claims the connectivity issues are a byproduct of 'heavy network traffic.'

After the Christmas Day DDoS attacks on PSN and Xbox Live gamers are appropriately wary any time they have problems logging onto their console's online service. It's for that reason that many are concerned about a recent error that is preventing gamers from logging into PSN.

The incident began late Tuesday night and is still giving players trouble as of this writing. Sony has yet to provide an official message about the outage (if you could call it that), but their PSN support page says the service is experiencing Heavy Network Traffic.

Personally, the online connectivity problems began with the PlayStation app, which would not display any Friends information but worked mostly fine outside of that. Turning the PS4 on, however, revealed similar Friends display problems, although the PSN store and online play worked fine. And eventually the Friends issues seemingly worked themselves out as if nothing had happened.

Other players have not been as lucky, reporting connectivity issues across the board. For some the connection issues are tied directly to PSN, while for others it is specific games. They can get online and start a party chat or browse the store, for example, but trying to connect to an online multiplayer server renders no results.

Obviously, the term Heavy Network Traffic has many thinking that the PSN has been hit with yet another DDoS attack, but as of yet no group is taking credit for the down time. Luckily, the problems aren't quite as prolific as they were over the holidays; many gamers are still able to log onto their PS4 or PS3 with little problems.

However, the timing of the outage is curious if only because it comes at a time when traffic is typically not as high. Sure, plenty of gamers enjoy late night gaming on Destiny or Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, but we doubt that there are so many North American gamers trying to long on that the service would falter.

Chances are Sony will be able to fix the connectivity problems overnight, but in case they don't gamers should know that they are not alone. Unfortunately, there's no workaround for getting back online; simply keep trying until maybe you are lucky enough.

Have you experienced any PlayStation Network problems lately? What issues did you encounter?

Source: PlayStation