PlayStation Network is back online after hours of downtime

PlayStation Network is back up and running after several hours of downtime, Sony's Shuhei Yoshida has confirmed. Earlier in the day the company confirmed what gamers using the PlayStation Network on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita this morning already knew: the company's online service was down. At the time, Sony was unable to approximate when service would return.

The company has a history with outages of the PlayStation Network, which connects multiplayer games on its consoles and also hosts its digital storefront. In 2011, the PlayStation Network's security was compromised, leading to a 23-day outage. It's unclear what caused this latest outage. "We're aware that some users are having trouble accessing PSN," tweeted @AskPlayStation at the time. "Thanks for your patience as we investigate."