Sony’s PlayStation Network services have been offline for hours today, leaving fans unable to play some digital games. Unsurprisingly, impacted users have been left pointing to the benefits of physical copies — just weeks after Sony’s bombshell announcement it will kill PS5 discs.
PlayStation services began to disappear for some users around 8.30am Eastern this morning, around the same time as an alert from Amazon Web Services that “multiple AWS servers in the US-WEST-2 region” were facing “connectivity issues.” Despite the problem being marked as resolved around an hour later, players report continued experiencing continued issues in the hours since — and in countries outside the U.S., too.
The issue has hit PlayStation services just as the open beta for the Sony-published (and console exclusive) Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls was getting underway, with its developer subsequently acknowledging issues on PS5.
To our Tōkon Warriors,
We’re aware that some PlayStation players are experiencing login and network issues. Our team is actively investigating the problem and working to identify the cause. We’ll share updates as soon as we have more information.
Thank you for your patience…
— MARVEL Tōkon: Fighting Souls (@MARVELTokon) July 24, 2026
At the time of writing, Sony’s own service status page continues to show errors across every PlayStation network service, from playing and purchasing digital content, streaming games, account management services and more.
“You might have difficulty launching games, apps, or network features,” Sony wrote on its official status page, with impacted platforms listed as including PS Vita, PS3, PS4 and PS5. “We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.”
While outages happen, the timing for this latest interruption of service could not be much worse. As well as impacting Marvel Tōkon, a key title for Sony, the disruption comes as the firestorm of controversy over Sony’s decision to kill discs is still very much aflame. This month has seen Sony continually slammed by PlayStation fans for its hugely unpopular decision to discontinue launching new PS5 games via physical discs from January 2028 onwards — a choice that has sparked an enormous petition, endless social media posts, and a stream of angry commentary on every trailer or livestream that the console maker now hosts.
Only last night, Sony uploaded new footage of its promising-looking exclusive Marvel’s Wolverine — though the YouTube comments are full of further outrage at the disc situation. Analysts and even former Sony staff say that the situation is highly unlikely to change, but regardless — fans are not letting this one go anytime soon, and a moment that highlights one of the pitfalls of gaming’s all-digital future has today only underlined its downsides further.
“We had ourselves a lovely PSN outage, we see,” wrote gaming accessibility service Does it Play?, which champions physical game media. “Just one of many things that can go wrong with an all-digital future in the way Sony’s shapes up to be. Be careful what you wish for.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
