Sony's online support co-ordinator for the EU PlayStation Network has revealed that there'll be a maintenance session for the service this evening.

"There is PSN Maintenance scheduled for Thursday 12th September from 17:00 until Thursday 12th September 19:00 BST," came the message over on the EU Community Forums.

"For the duration of the maintenance you will be unable to log into the PlayStation Network, Account Management and the PS Store.  PS Home will also be unavailable.

"Some users may be able to sign in however, the services listed above will still be unavailable during the maintenance window.

"There may be some additional downtime after the maintenance period for testing purposes."

It was also revealed that maintenance might not necessarily mean something's broken, and that sometimes it can simply be routine testing of the service to make sure everything's running smoothly.

Hopefully Sony can work out how to do this sort of thing on  the fly ahead of the PS4's release. Hopefully. Thanks for the tip, Dan.