Ben-DutkaSome forgive, others forget. Either way, the PlayStation Network debacle earlier this year hasn't halted the PSN in its tracks.
In good news today, Sony has revealed that Network sales are "currently exceeding those from before the attack."
During a Sony conference at the IFA electronics show and as cited by CNet, Sony CEO Howard Stringer told the audience that the PSN has recovered and is doing better than ever before. In fact, there have been 3 million new customers since the Network returned to life in early June. Said Stringer:
"I'm pleased to tell you that the PSN is more secure and better than ever. We are aggressively expanding its content. We have more than 3 million new customers since the network came back online, and sales are exceeding what we had before the cyberattacks.
This year, we at Sony have been flooded, we've been flattened, we've been hacked, we've been singed. But the summer of our discontent is behind us. The past is a prologue to future possibility."
Things are looking up for Sony, despite a few dire predictions from analysts, as most of the loyal have clearly remained loyal and new customers continue to arrive. Plus, given the fall lineup and the latest PS3 price drop, good times are a comin'.
How Shakespearean! Any chance Stringer's first name is Richard?
During the outage, I played Uncharted 1 and 2, finally got around to going back to Assassin's Creed 1 (skipped it originally), and played Dragon Age 2. I was fine. And we all knew Sony would be fine.
Glad to be reinforced on the issue, though.
Good, the PSN offers alot to owners for free, I would be very sad if that crisis had the last say on the PSN.
LOL! I know it's originally Shakespeare, but this reminds me more of the UK winter of 1978/79, the so-called Winter of Discontent. Honestly as bad as things are now folks, it could be worse, believe me, I lived it.
Anyway, British economic struggles in the 70's aside, it's good to see Sony and PSN bouncing back. Honestly, as headline grabbing and horrible as the events were, if we look at the actuality of the whole situation, Sony has been largely vindicated with regards to the apparent end-of-the-world, sky-is-falling, doom merchants, and also in terms of how they dealt with the situation and their customers. if you compare and contrast the impact from other recent large scale security breaches Sony has done pretty well in most regards. Irrespective of the arguments about how good (or not) their security was in the first place, it's clearly better now. Network stability isn't an issue, and PlayStation continues to shine.
I don't expect people will soon forget, it was too long an outage and too potentially damaging a situation. But still, the actual impacts of the situation have been remarkably limited – thankfully.
PSN has come on leaps and bounds from the original implementation. The basic functionality of the network – play – hasn't really altered, but the store and the experience has improved greatly. The amount of content available is awesome. Now, if only we could get the PSP game sale that Europe recently had…
It was damaging to Sony, proving that their user base has some power over them. Reality is they could always be attacked from within again, at any time. Ultimately it is the employees of Sony that hold the key, the could, if disgruntled enough, bring the whole show down.
Sony should be on guard and treat their customers with respect… they should never forget that…
Q!
"play.experience.enjoy"
I was pretty pissed when the PSN went down for as long as it did but their welcome back program and the stability of the service since its come back has been more than enough to make me forgive and forget.
Could not agree more with you
My PS3 YLODed right before PSN went down, so I was really pissed as Sony but for a different reason.
People forget that very easily because all they want is play games. When everyone got to play their games together again, worrying about the past is put aside.
We lost a 60GB phat during the outage and by the time we got the system fixed, PSN was back. Still, Sony replaced it with the same mode refurb for $135 all inclusive (delivery, packaging and tax). Not bad on balance.
The same happend to be last year, I was expecting to have to send it off and wait for ages to get a replacement to my supirse the chap who collected it had a replacement that very day. and it's the same phat 60gb model so I can still play PS2 games in HD, unlike many other peopel who have to pay for the HD rereleases.
Ultima,
Unless you're emulating those PS2 games on your PC you're not playing them in HD.
lol, even then they aren't quite up to HD remake status.
I think the PS3 has a upscaling feature, though I don't think it does such a good job or some games..
Well they're not 'remastered' like the splinter cell series but they at least look good on a big screen, unlike if you were to plug in a PS2 to a HDTV with a typical White, red & yellow audio/video cable. My Phat PS3 makes games and DVD's both look good on my HDTV, which is why I feel no need to buy Blu-rays films either. The PS3 is so good at upscaling there is no need.
A composite cable into the back of the PS2 makes PS2 games look better than a PS3 does.
Is a composite wire the one with the yellow, red and white end? or is that something different, beause the YW wired cable just looks awful, well its looks the same as a PS1, or SNES plugged into a HDTV real soft image, full of jaggies, just nasty.
green, blue, yellow, and red aside from the red and white audio.
It can add super jaggies in certain games, but there's a kind of give and take as it does make things clearer and some textures look better. High end games look great.
I hate that PS3 with software emu won't play Shadow Hearts II 🙁
Last edited by WorldEndsWithMe on 9/1/2011 2:59:17 PM
Ah right ok, well I have not had a PS2 in years so I never tried that, But I don't like to have loads of consoles hanigng around my TV, I just have my PS3, it can handle all 3 consoles well in my opinion.. oh & my flatmates 360…
The only games that dont work for me are Tekken Tag… 1 and Jak & Daxter, in comparsion to the 360's backwards compatible line up, thats quite a feat.
@ World
You mean component cable; composite is actually what UD described.
Hey Ben whens the next PSXE meetup? Its seems like its been over 3 weeks since weve had one heh
It should have been tonight, because the new video is now showing. The Home people don't seem to give Ben any forewarning. I tried to give him a heads-up last night, but he must not read his PSN messages very often.
I bet it'll be on Saturday or next Thursday.
Huh? PSN was down? Just kidding. I'm just glad that's behind us because the fanboys that came out of the woodwork like ants had me on the defensive.
PSN being down was a bittersweet moment for me. I couldn't continue pistol whipping and punching people in UC2 online with my buddies, buut I did get a great month of nostalgia bliss in replaying old PS1 games (FFVII,VIII,IX, Chrono Cross, Parasite Eve, UmJammer Lammy etc.) and Shadow of the Colossus on the PS2.
Funny, the PSN outage to me is just a blur.
Last edited by Doppel on 9/1/2011 5:47:23 PM
you drank too much
I think the publicity it brought might have even been beneficial. 3 million new subscribers to PSN is a lot, and I bet the new subscribers went into it with the mindset that they were delving into an improved system. I for one was happy to get a couple free games (well 1.5 actually, because I had them all but Dead Nation, but I did get the Fury pack for Wipeout HD free).
I actually don't play online religiously though. I do have spurts where I play a lot, but luckily during that time I didn't have any online games on the go. I usually just use it to upload scores and whatnot when I'm playing games like Vanquish, Catherine, or DMC 4.
i just hope they learnt their lesson.
hopefully next time when someone comes knocking on the door predicting the apocalypse they dont just slam the door shut on them!
wish they would hurry up and fix the auto updates in the new FW too, ever since the 3.7 FW came out it has not been working properly.
dunno how $ony manage this, but every single time they release a new FW they somehow manage to f*ck something up!
wish they would remove the auto update messages every time i start a game.
gets freaking annoying getting asked the same question every single time i boot up a game!
if the answer was no 2 hours ago, it was no yesterday, it was no the day before that, what makes you think the answer has changed?