Despite earlier reports claiming the PlayStation Network would be up and running by May 31, Sony has publicly denied the existence of any such deadline.

Earlier today, a Bloomberg report quoted Sony spokesman Shigenori Yoshida as saying that though the company is "uncertain when it can resume ... services," the plan is to have the firm's flagship online service up and running no later than May 31.

Since that time Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold has asserted that there is no such deadline in place and that no new information exists on when the PSN will be able to resume service.

For those keeping score at home the PSN has been offline for nearly three weeks since the April 20 attack in which hackers broke into Sony's PlayStation Network/Qriocity system, compromising reams of valuable user information and forcing the electronics giant to pull down its entire online gaming infrastructure in the name of security upgrades.

Sony has recently stepped up its efforts to patch holes in its network, but given the historical persistence of the hacker community and its seeming blood oath to do as much damage to Sony as possible, the firm's refusal to commit to a deadline on the PSN's resurrection comes as no surprise.

Still, one hopes the company has some sort of plan in place. The longer this outage rolls on, the more Sony loses face with an increasingly impatient playerbase. Are any of you still anxiously clutching a plush Crash Bandicoot and ticking off the days until you can once again browse the PSN store?

Source: Venture Beat, via Giant Bomb