PSN down for maintenance Jan. 17

UPDATE: Despite the original estimated end time of 11p.m. (EST) on Jan. 17, Sony has extended the maintenance outage until the morning of Jan. 18.  Should further updates come our way, we’ll let you know.

ORIGINAL STORY:

As announced a few days ago via the PlayStation Blog, the PlayStation Network is offline for maintenance today.

Sony says this outage has been scheduled for “routine maintenance.” The network went offline around 11a.m. (Eastern) this morning and maintenance is slated to last until around 11p.m. this evening.

During the maintenance period, the PlayStation Store and Account Management features will be unavailable to users. PS3 owners will, however, be able to play games and use other apps online, as long as they’ve signed into PSN at some point over the last two days. Maintaining online play is a good move on Sony’s part, especially as the Beta for one of its upcoming games, God of War: Ascension, was recently opened to PlayStation Plus users.

This is Sony’s first PSN outage of the new year.