Sony on Tuesday announced that the PlayStation Network will undergo regular maintenance on Thursday, January 15 for a period of around four hours. The maintenance will take place that day from 9 AM to 1 PM PDT (12 Noon to 4 PM EDT/ 5 PM to 9 PM UK). “During this time, we will deploy a series of back-end improvements to the network,” Sony said in his post on its support website today. It seems that this is only a standard, regular maintenance, as Sony has used the same exact wording to describe previous service upkeep.

 If you want to play online during this time, be sure to log in before 17:00 so that you can play on.

However, the PlayStation Store, PlayStation Home (which is going away for good soon), and Account Management will not be available during the period. “We thank you for your patience and support and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause,” Sony said.This is actually the first regularly scheduled PSN maintenance period following the massive Christmas Day DDoS attack that brought the service down for days, causing headaches for millions.