9:30AM UPDATE - Sony has confirmed, via its status page, that things are all back to normal but it seems some gamers are still facing trouble after last night's outage.

Despite the service being restored. Twitter is still full complaints about PSN being down with many unable to log into their accounts.

ORIGINAL STORY: Sony PlayStation gamers are suffering with a major outage tonight as thousands can't access the PSN network.

Problems seemed to start around 11.30pm with the issues still ongoing.

Independent website Down Detector has received thousands of reports that Sony's PSN is down and not working.

The outage tracker monitors social mentions around certain topics to detect outages across the world.

The issues appear to be widespread with problems reported in the UK, other areas of Europe.

Sony has also acknowledged the issues with the firm saying: "You may have some difficulty signing in or creating an account on PlayStation™Network.

"Our engineers are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible, and we thank you for your patience."