[Update 10:10 am] The PlayStation Network outages may take longer than expected to fix. In an update on the PlayStation Blog corporate communications director Patrick Seybold said it might last "a full day or two."

While we are investigating the cause of the Network outage, we wanted to alert you that it may be a full day or two before we’re able to get the service completely back up and running. Thank you very much for your patience while we work to resolve this matter. Please stay tuned to this space for more details, and we'll update you again as soon as we can.

It's hard to imagine worse timing for Sony, as this comes during the launch of multiplayer-focused SOCOM 4, the cross-platform Steamworks debut of Portal 2, the Infamous 2 beta test, and the fighting game Mortal Kombat. Sony's servers are probably being taxed to the bone, but the word "investigation" seems to imply there's more at work here. We'll keep an eye on the situation.

[Original Story] The PlayStation Network has been suffering outages last night and into today. In a near superhuman display of vagueness, Sony senior director of corporate communications Patrick Seybold has issued a statement. "We're aware certain functions of PlayStation Network are down," he said. "We will report back here as soon as we can with more information."

The problem seems to be affecting more than one region, but Sony is staying mum across the map. Kotaku reports that Sony Help Desk employees were given a memo claiming that the outages are due to "emergency maintenance."

Though it could be unrelated, the hacker group Anonymous staged a series of denial of service attacks only a few weeks ago, in retaliation for its case against PS3 hackers George Hotz and Graf_Chokolo. The group halted the attacks and apologized for negatively impacting users when the target was Sony itself.

Sony ultimately settled the suit with Hotz, but Anonymous promised to keep its anti-Sony campaign going. The group's latest public effort was a sit-in at Sony stores.