Sony has announced that some routine PSN maintenance will take place this Thursday, February 12th beginning at 12pm Eastern Time and lasting until 3:30pm. The maintenance is so that Sony can apply some “back end improvements to the network.” All systems are affected, but existing players will not be kicked off of the network. This means that if you sign into PSN before the maintenance begins, you will be able to continue playing throughout the expected downtime.

Some important notes about this workaround were provided:

PS4 users – The PS4 must be activated as your Primary System in order to play online titles and services.  Check here for instructions on setting your PS4 as your Primary System.

PS3/PS Vita – Make sure to sign in to the network on the device(s) you plan to use during maintenance.

This is only for online play though as the PlayStation Store, PlayStation Home, and Account Management will be down for everyone whether they logged in beforehand or not. Attempts to access these services will result in error codes, so don’t be surprised if you see some.

s PSN has been relatively stable lately, after a number of outages, including a major one on Super Bowl Sunday. Aside from an occasional blip outage here and there, PSN has remained online. This was certainly not the case a few months ago, as hackers and random issues caused multiple outages. Hopefully this, and the other maintenance windows have allowed Sony to fortify the network, making it more stable for the future.