Two items of PlayStation 3 interest for you – one of impending importance.

First up the chaps at the official European PlayStation blog (http://blog.eu.playstation.com) have confirmed that the PlayStation Network will be taken offline later on this afternoon. The fun, or lack thereof, kicks off at 16.15 BST and concludes around 21.15. “Maintenance” is the quoted reason, and this will be a simultaneous global shutdown.

There may be one way to stay connected during the outage, though – just try staying connected to PSN as the planned maintenance begins. Otherwise it’s five hours of no online gaming or PSN Shopping. Can you live with that?

In other PS3-related news it has been revealed that Sony is still making a loss on every PS3 Slim it sells.

“If you're just talking about the hardware alone, the quick answer is yes,” Sony Bossman Kaz Hirai tells timesonline.co.uk, before quickly pointing out that things are not quite as grim as they might seem:

“I think the better indicator is to look at the business as a whole platform, to ask: are you profitable in terms of the hardware, software and peripherals. And the answer to that question is yes on a gross profit level since the last fiscal year.”

So, no need to ditch the Sony shares, then. At least not just yet...