Expect a lengthy PSN downtime next week

Sony will take the PlayStation Network offline during prime gaming time in the UK next week.

The PSN will be down for scheduled maintenance right when UK gamers are most likely to want to use it, unfortunately.

The outage begins at 5:40PM UK on Monday August 25 - click the link there for local times.

It will be offline for over seven hours, and is expected to come back online at 12:50AM UK on Tuesday August 26.

As this is the European PSN, all regions under the PAL umbrella will be affected, so Australians and New zealanders will be offline, too. It's a much more pleasant time of day for us, though.

There hasn't been an announcement on the North American PlayStation Blog or website, so at present it looks like that side of the pond gets off scot free.

During the downtime, the following services will be unavailable:

• PlayStation Store on all devices.
• PlayStation Network Account Management.
• PlayStation Network Account Registration.
• Entertainment services.
• Online gameplay.
• Signing in via PAL umbrella PlayStation.com sites.

There's no word on why the maintenance is necessary but in my foolish head there's an obvious explanation: the whole thing needs to be reinforced and given a loving once-over before Destiny launches in early September. If the PSN goes down that week, I will probably cry, and certainly write some angry blogs.