Sony is turning off some PSN features in preparation for European launch

Sony has announced that in order to keep the Playstation Network stable during the Playstation 4 launch in Europe, it will have to switch off a couple of  features. This isn't surprising as day one PS4 users in North America did experience network issues due to the amount of traffic.

The two features that are being turned off probably won't impact your day one experience too much. First up is the ‘Whats New' feature which tells users what their friends are currently doing or have been doing on their console whether it's playing a game, streaming or watching Netflix. Sony's blog post didn't say if this would also impact the ‘Whats New' section on the accompanying Android and IOS apps but it most likely will. Secondly users won't have access to the PS4's ‘content information screens', or sub-menus for short. These appear beneath games on the Playstation's main menu.

Sony did explain why this has to happen, although at this point I think it's fairly obvious:

“Following the successful launch of PS4 in North America on the 15th November, we have seen an unprecedented influx of players onto PSN. When we launch in Europe on Friday, once again, we are expecting record sales and record numbers of people logging onto PSN at similar times, alongside the North American players already on PSN.”  The blog then goes on to promise us that we'll see these features go back online within days, it just needs some time for the launch day intensity to calm down.

All core functions of the Playstation Network should be working fine today, including online multiplayer and the Playstation store.

Kitguru Says: It'll be interesting to see the sale numbers after today, Microsoft launched its console in more territories but only managed to match the PS4's North American sales. Now that Sony's console is hitting more territories, we'll be keeping an eye on the sales gap. Are any of you guys skipping school/work today to spend some quality time with your new console?

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