One of the perils of living on the wrong side of the world is that international downtimes very often coincide with exactly the moment that we Aussies would like to sit down and play a few online games of something.

Tonight is no exception, with a last-minute announcement from Sony that their new social networking project Home will be closed for several hours due to extended service maintenance, which will also see the service updated from v1.03 to 1.04. While things may change, at this stage, we are expecting things to resume in around three hours from now (12:30am Friday, Adelaide time / 6am Thursday, Pacific).

The update will hopefully ease the difficulty gamers have been experiencing while trying to access Home, due to the high demand for the service (or, as reported by Krystalle, a drunk server hamster).

One unfortunate downside of v1.04 is that voice chat will be temporarily suspended until further notice - so all gamers are encouraged to use the wireless PS3 keypad, or any USB/Bluetooth-enabled keyboard to use text chat, or to try out the "phone friend" feature to communicate within the program.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you and kindly ask for your understanding.