A spokesperson for Sony Japan has warned that PlayStation Network may not be fully operational again until 31st May.

Shigenori Yoshida told Bloomberg that the plan was to "restart services fully" by that day.

As of today, PSN has been offline for 19 days. The service went down on 20th April.

Should the PSN restoration go the distance, the online platform will have been unusable for 41 days.

A phased restoration of PlayStation Network was supposed to happen last week.

On Saturday, however, Sony announced (via the European PlayStation blog) a delay to this strategy brought on by the breach of Sony Online Entertainment's servers.

As you may know, we've begun the process of restoring the service through internal testing of the new system. We're still working to confirm the security of the network infrastructure, as well as working with a variety of outside entities to confirm with them of the security of the system. Verifying the system security is vital for the process of restoration. Additional comprehensive system checks and testing are still required, and we must complete that process before bringing the systems online.

As you've heard us say, our utmost priorities are the security of the network and ensuring your data is safe. We won't restore the services until we can test the system's strength in these respects.

When we held the press conference in Japan last week, based on what we knew, we expected to have the services online within a week. We were unaware of the extent of the attack on Sony Online Entertainment servers, and we are taking this opportunity to conduct further testing of the incredibly complex system. We know many of you are wanting to play games online, chat with your friends and enjoy all of the services PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have to offer, and trust me when I say we're doing everything we can to make it happen. We will update you with more information as soon as we have it. We apologize for the delay and inconvenience of this network outage.