PSN down following today’s PS5 firmware update

gamepur.com:

So often, fixing one issue causes a whole host of other ones to pop up. Most systems, especially when it comes to networks, are inherently fragile things. According to the Ask PlayStation Japanese Twitter account, the most recent update to PlayStation consoles, which introduced a series of features including Voice Command and new accessibility features to the PS5, seems to have caused the PSN to crash. Players have found themselves unable to connect to multiplayer titles or make purchases from the store.

Players who attempt to connect to the network have instead been greeted with the error message “Connection to the PlayStation Network failed.” While most single-player games will still be playable in offline mode, any games that rely on a connection to the PlayStation Network, like Gran Turismo 7, will not function until the network is back up.

This isn’t the first time that the PSN has gone down, causing issues for players waiting in lobbies with error messages. Sony has not yet commented on why the most recent update, which changed how players connected to voice chat through the PS App, caused such an unexpected issue, but outages like this tend to be fixed within a few hours. Sony will have deployed its top resources to get the network back up as quickly as possible.