UPDATE: Despite saying I’d probably wait a day or two, I’ve caved in and have just turned on my PlayStation and am now downloading the 3.61 firmware. I’ll update you later on my progress – 8 per cent downloaded so far (the update will probably be  after my wife has finished watching Criminal Minds, or something, so bear with me.)

UPDATE 2: 16 per cent downloaded. Go you good thing.

UPDATE 3: OK, the firmware has finished updating, I’ve just signed into PSN but now prompted to change my password (I’ll do that in the next ad break of Criminal Minds once I’ve finished doing gaming-related stuff).

UPDATE 4: … and that’s all done. Password changed, then reentered, email sent to my nominated email account and PSN is up and running again. Congrats Sony that was a pain free experience which took much quicker than I expected. It was actually less painful that watching Criminal Minds.

Sony starts PSN rollout

ORIGINAL POST: So, the PSN was apparently rolled out in in New Zealand today, as part of the staggered worldwide rollout – but it seems there have been so many people logging onto the system that it’s been a little intermittent. According to Sony’s blog, the rollout started in the Americas, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East.

You’ll all recall that the PSN has been offline for almost a month after a severe hacking attack that accessed personal information on 77 million PlayStation Network and Qriocity accounts, 90 per cent of which are in North America and Europe, and may have stolen credit card information.

Sony says it hopes to have the service fully operational by May 31, and in a video statement on the Sony blog today, Sony’s Kaz Hirai said, “I can’t thank you enough for your patience and support during this time. We are taking aggressive action at all levels to address the concerns that were raised by this incident, and are making consumer data protection a fulltime, companywide commitment.”

When you do manage to get onto the PSN, there’s new 3.61 firmware that you have to install and then a mandatory password reset. You can also change your password by visiting https://store.playstation.com/login.gvm on your PC.

I haven’t checked whether PSN is up and running again tonight – Twitter followers tell me it’s up one minute, then down the next  – but I might get around to it sometime tonight. Probably not, though, as with millions of people around the world trying to access it all at once,  I might just leave it a day or two until things settle down.

That’s fine with me: I’m not hanging out to play Black Ops like many people are.