The PlayStation Network is back, thus ending a monthlong nightmare of having to play the passionately-crafted storymode of games and being forced to buy our games in tangible form at retail stores, having to put on clothes and interact with people. As of last night, Sony rolled out firmware update 3.61, which, after downloading and forcing users to change their previously hacked PSN passwords, allowed us back onto the network so we could obsessively compare our trophies with buddies on our friends list and finally get to PS3 Portal 2 co-op.
The soothing green in the map above represents which regions have had PSN service restored. Last night when the announcement first hit the Internet, only a small portion of the northeastern United States was illuminated, though as one can see from the above map, service should be restored to rest of the country as of this morning. The official PlayStation Blog reports that if you are within a region that is supposed to have regained PSN service, but do not currently actually have PSN service, nothing is wrong, and the rollout may just take a bit of time to hit your area. The PlayStation Blog also reports that if there are certain features that are still down, such as the PlayStation Store, they are working on getting said feature(s) up as soon as possible. And what about those free games and service subscriptions Sony promised us as an apology for the PSN outage? Well, they haven’t been announcement yet, but Kaz Hirai himself assured us the packages will be announced within the coming days, and that they will be region specific. Head on past the break to see Kaz Hirai’s official announcement of the PSN’s restoration, then quickly hop into Portal 2 and get testing. GLaDOS can’t wait all day.
(via PlayStation.Blog)
