PSN isn’t exactly a robust online network. While it’s certainly better now than it was back in the fledgling days of the PS3’s online network, Sony is still way behind the amount of options offered to Xbox Live users, and considering that it’s housed on the most popular console of this current generation, you’d think that Sony would have figured out a way to perform routine maintenance and handle increased traffic without the whole thing coming crashing to a halt for hours on end.
The PlayStation Network has been down on three separate occasions since last Friday, preventing users from not only playing games but, in many cases, accessing the likes of Netflix and Amazon Instant Video. This latest outage inspired the creation of the hashtag #BetterPSN, along with the creation of a Better PSN website, that is encouraging Sony to improve its online network now that the service is no longer free.
PSN went down around the same time as Sony releases its PS Plus games for July, an indicator of how ill-equipped its online infrastructure is.
The campaign’s site lists a number of improvements users want to be made to the service, including less disruptive maintenance, dedicated servers, an offline profile status and enhanced user profiles. Sony has now responded to the campaign, with a spokesperson for the company releasing a statement to GamesBeat, which reads: “Feedback from our community is very important to us and helps guide our ongoing commitment toward making PlayStation the best place to play. We encourage users to submit ideas on ways to improve PlayStation products and services here: http://share.blog.us.playstation.com/. We appreciate the dialogue we have with our gamers and have built and improved features based directly on their input.”
Unfortunately the company hasn’t directly addressed any of the issues noted by #BetterPSN, so it remains to be seen whether this will actually lead to the online network being improved or if any of these requests from users are taken on board. We can but hope.
