Sony's PlayStation Network, its core service offering for PS3 and Sony portable devices has been down for over 2 weeks now. The media outlets have been on fire with news around it all from topics on who, how, why, and what is next for Sony and gamers.
Today is May 10th and I really had thought Sony made an announcement last week stating PSN would be online by the 8th or so. They are in a sticky situation with the immediate demands from the user base while fending off the media, and working to research and protect the network in place. I hope they are able to turn the network back on such that PSN user's don't experience anything different from what they had before due to upgraded security or other things. The latest news on the outage came yesterday stating that Sony expects PSN to be down for the rest of the month. I’m not sure this is nailed down, but the Internet rumors of a 5/31 re-launch.
Since PSN has been down I just shifted any online activity solely to Xbox Live. I have the luxury of this convenience, but it has to be seriously painful for those PSN users who only have a PS3. With the lack of a network not only are online games blocked, but other services such as Netflix, Hulu +, PlayStation Store and PlayStation Home are down. For all Sony does to say PlayStation does everything, now it only does one thing, play discs locally. I guess overall this is a setback that takes us back to PlayStation 2 days at worst.
I did consider what life would be like if my online community and access were completely cut off. Would I just react and shift my activities? I can do a lot of online browsing of Netflix and Hulu through my PC, and it’s not completely inconvenient. I can watch directly or plug into my stereo and TV for the full effect. However, on a positive note for this, as it is Spring, in most of the country, we are still pulling and grabbing here in Seattle to reach 60 deg F on any given day and hopefully it comes w/ some direct sunshine, rather than cloud filtered. In any case, it is fair that at least the weather should be good for most people so that they are not stuck indoors moping the whole time.
Life goes on, people gripe, but they tend to get their due also. Sony has stated it will offer a compensation package for all affected users. Reports suggest 77 million users lost personal information via this event, yet how many of those accounts are regular PSN users who care? Nothing definite has been posted for the compensation package, but rumors mention item such as: 1 month Hulu + free, 1 free PSN game, membership for up to a year subscription service to protect your identity and information, and maybe a few others items that are region specific. I guess Sony will post these options and see how bites. It’s all voluntary, so of the 77 million accounts, those who aren’t regular users and don’t pay attention likely won’t receive anything. I do wonder how much this has cost and will continue to cost Sony business. Microsoft has already gone through its pain points (probably more to come) and it cost them Mizillions.
A topic I’ve read upon, but won’t comment much about is around the speculation of what hacker, or hacker groups did this to Sony. It’s quite an interesting collection of stories from both sides and media outlets working to decipher who did it, diagram how they did, and then figure out why and what they plan to do w/ the compromised user data. If lawsuits come down on Sony and the supposed suspects of the network break in, I wonder how far and how long the lawsuits will go.
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