So with Sony looking like missing their own deadline to bring PSN back, even in a limited fashion, by the end of the week (although they still have a day to keep good on that promise), there are a couple of other news items that won't be celebrated at Sony HQ.
First up is the financial consequences for Sony with such an extended down time, plus more importantly, the lost of trust that has occurred due to the data leak.
CitiGroup Global Markets Analyst, Kota Ezawa released research notes which point to a painful future, at least in the short term, for Sony and the PlayStation brand, in particularly the PS3. Ezawa feels that customers may no longer feel safe when using Sony hardware and services, and this could affect PS3 sales. At the very least, not having a working online component would have affected sales in the last two and a bit weeks.
The bigger problem for Sony is that there are ready made alternatives available in a very competitive market, and the problem is compounded by the fact that many already perceive the Xbox Live paid for service to be better than what Sony can offer. And with online gaming, "the more the merrier" is certainly key, with gamers often opting for the platform their friends are on, and if there is a shift towards the Xbox 360, then it will continue to hurt the PS3 in the mid to long term.
The other piece of news that Sony would not have welcomed relates back to how this "hackers vs Sony" got started in the first place. Sony's removal of OtherOS on the PS3, a feature they heavily promoted, which they then later removed with little notice, was the catalyst that eventually led to the hacking of the PS3, Sony's lawsuit against the hackers, and then Anonymous' and other hackers attacks on Sony servers in retaliation, which may have contributed to the recent, more serious, security breach. OtherOS allows Linux to be run on the PS3, and ironically, while the PS3's online component is completely crippled this week, hackers have managed to bring back OtherOS support, and even improve upon it.
Who's more to blame for this whole episode? Sony, who managed to design several security flaws into both the PSN and PS3 to allow hackers to get in, and then sues those that dare to point out the flaws, or hackers, who have launched a sustanined attack on Sony for a feature that Sony says was removed due to financial reasons? Post your opinion in this news article's comments section, or in this forum thread:
http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?t=94833
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