Sony's online service is currently unavailable, and the company has offered no estimate for when it will return.

Just a few days after it was taken down for routine maintenance, the PlayStation Network is again offline, this time due to some unspecified problems.

The PSN status page on PlayStation's support website currently says the service is offline. It also offers a pretty standard, detail-light message to fans. "PSN is currently offline, and we are hard at work to resume service," it states. "At this time an estimate as to when PSN will be online is unavailable; however, we will update this article as soon as there's additional information. If you would like to receive a notice when PSN is fully restored, be sure to follow the official PlayStation Twitter account and our support Twitter account, @AskPlayStation."

That Twitter support account sent out a tweet this afternoon informing users of the issues, and it, too, offered very little in the way of specifics: "We're aware some of you are unable to connect to the PSN. Thanks for your patience as we investigate."

PSN was offline earlier this month in both North America and Europe. This followed downtime in August, which a group of hackers took credit for along with attacks on servers for Battle.net, League of Legends, and other games.

We contacted Sony regarding the downtime and were referred to the tweet referenced above. We'll report back with any additional updates we receive on PSN's status.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/psn.../1100-6423007/