Sony offers five days extension to PS Plus memberships following this weekend's PSN outage

After the PlayStation Network was unexpectedly taken offline for nearly 24 hours over the weekend, Sony is now offering PS Plus subscribers an extra five days of membership.

The details:

• Late on Friday, PSN abruptly went offline, affecting all of its services and preventing players from using any online features across all PlayStation consoles, as well as other services such as the Store and website. Sony confirmed the outage with no further explanation, which lasted almost a day before service was restored on Saturday.

• Sony has now stated that the outage was caused by an "operational issue" and that all systems should be operational again. As an apology to users, the company has extended each existing PS Plus subscription by five days, regardless of the subscription tier.

• While not as severe as the infamous 2011 PSN outage, which lasted 24 days following a major security breach affecting customer data, the outage has sparked renewed debate about the transition to digital media. PS5 players were unable to access some of their games during the outage due to the way licenses are handled on the console, and as many games now require constant internet connections to play "offline" modes, it effectively rendered some consoles useless.

More gaming news:

• Despite rumors of a delay, Take-Two has confirmed that GTA VI will still launch later this year.

• The Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the former organizer of E3, has announced a new invite-only event called the Interactive Innovation Conference (iicon), which will be attended by major companies from a variety of industries including gaming, tech, sports, and film.