The PlayStation Network is set to go under maintenance today from 8am until approximately 5pm Pacific time. During the down time, Sony is looking to tweak and enhance registration, password reset and Account Management which means those services will be unavailable during the down time. According to Sony, although some users might have difficulty signing into PSN on the PS3 and to additional services like the PlayStation Blog, the majority of users should have no problem accessing the services, including playing online.

It also comes as no surprise that the PlayStation Store, therefor will not be returning today as it had been rumored in the past. Instead, Sony has gone on record and stated that their goal is to have the store up by the months end. Meaning, check it out next Tuesday folks.

I personally wouldn’t be surprised if this maintenance further has to do with the recent hacking incidents as Sony wants to test for any weaknesses in their system. A few down hours to test and beef up the system is a lot better then another major downtime. You can bet that ever since PSN came  back up, that hackers have been doing their best to to try and exploit the system game.

Hit the jump for the official press release fro Sony. While you are there, let us know if you are experiencing any problems with PSN or if things are going smooth for you.

Updated:

Maintenance has now been completed and full PSN services have been restored to all web and console users.

 PlayStation Network is scheduled to undergo maintenance today, from about 8am until approximately 5pm Pacific time. During this time, registration and Account Management will be inaccessible, including the password reset process. While some users may experience difficulty signing in to PSN, the majority of consumers will be able to play online as well as sign in to external sites that require PSN authentication (like this one).

For those asking about the PlayStation Store, we’re still targeting restoration of all services by the end of this month. Contrary to reports, the Store will not be publishing today.

Stay tuned to the PlayStation Twitter feed for updates and a notice when maintenance has concluded.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.