Sony, what’s with the excessive PSN downtime?

Sometimes, you just fill up with so much frustration that you can’t make any sense.  I’ve had to calm myself down whilst writing about PSN downtime or else this post would have just been full of !@?&# and other such symbols censoring a rather exuberant use of the English language.

It’s not so much annoyance at the fact that the PlayStation Network has so much down time (or as Sony likes to call it, ‘maintenance’), it’s the fact that for Europe, it is performed at the worst possible time for our timezone.

Here’s PlayStation.Blog.Europe’s latest announcement:

PlayStation Network is offline for scheduled maintenance from 16:05 on Thursday 18 November 2010 until 01:00 on Friday 19 November 2010, GMT.

As many people have noted in the comments, this update again falls at peak gaming for Europe.  If Sony wants to tinker with the PlayStation Network 365 days a year, I don’t really care, but please, why can’t it be done either in the middle of the day or in the early hours of the morning?

I’ve had enough, have you?