Sony plans PSN restart by May 31

Nearly three weeks after pulling the plug on the PlayStation Network, Sony says it plans to have its online systems fully back online by May 31. Tokyo-based spokesman Shigenori Yoshida told Bloomberg that Sony is in the process of improving its security system and aims to have the service "fully" restored by the end of the month.

The revised deadline comes after Sony missed its initial target date last week; on April 27, the company said it expected "to have some services up and running within a week from yesterday." If Sony resumes PSN service on May 31, the global outage will have lasted six weeks in total.

Sony took the PSN offline on April 20 after the service was hacked, compromising the personal data and account details of millions of users. It formally owned up to the network intrusion and potential data theft some days later, and later still, it confirmed to Congress that data had indeed been stolen from all 77 million PSN accounts.

The firm is currently investigating the hack with the aid of Homeland Security, the FBI, and external security firms and has outlined user compensation packages, including identity theft protection scheme memberships and free content.