PSN may be down until May 31st

Sony has clarified that the PlayStation Network will not be fully operational until May 31, according to media reports.

Talking to financial website Bloomberg, Sony spokesman Shigenori Yoshida said that the company is "uncertain" as to when individual services will be restored for the PlayStation 3 and PSP.

He noted that the plan is for all services to be fully restored by May 31, nearly six weeks after the network was taken down.

Some PSN services were meant to have relaunched over the past weekend, but Sony was forced to further delay the return following a new security breach.

Elsewhere, Nick Caplin, head of communications at SCEE, said that in light of the identity theft protection being offered to PSN users in North America, users in the SCEE region will also be provided with a similar service, although he noted that this is a "very complicated process".

He revealed in a PlayStation Blog post that EU gamers will be offered four free games as part of the Welcome Back programme. PS3 users will be able to choose two games from a list of five, while PSP users will be granted two games from a list of four.

["Very complicated process, huh?"....Okay...

I dont Believe you,.. but "okay"

As much as I dislike Anonymous, I have to hand it to them.. If their goal from stealing this information was to make Sony lose revenue and reputation..

They Succeeded.

Strange thing is, I also believe that by May 31st or whatever date they actually bring everything back online as it was originally, all PSN customers will hold no more animosity towards Sony.

I know I can really only speak for myself here, but.. Ah, who gives a crap..I can speak for all of Humanity too ]

lol see i told you soo pfttt believe sony over me lol. Within a week in final stages if take to may 31. Sony a bunch of fucking lairs period but yet you still believe them. Like would believe cheating g/f or b/f because love a console and that sad

like i said end of may before damn psn will work hahahaha hating sony for being a bunch of liars now the house is setting the guide lines for online services it willbe up one day but until that day we will just rant and rave

It's now Monday, the week after Sony told us to expect some functionality to return to the PlayStation Network. Sadly, that has not happened: you can't play your games online, make digital purchases, or download demos; the service remains completely dead. Sony is claiming that it's still unpacking the extent of the attacks, and the industry has begun to try to put a dollar amount on the damages being suffered by the Japanese company.

They'll share more information once they have it

Sony continues to give updates on the official PlayStation Blog, and Friday's was a doozy. "We were unaware of the extent of the attack on Sony Online Entertainment servers, and we are taking this opportunity to conduct further testing of the incredibly complex system," Patrick Seybold, the senior director of corporate communications and social media, wrote. "We know many of you are wanting to play games online, chat with your friends and enjoy all of the services PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have to offer, and trust me when I say we're doing everything we can to make it happen." He also stated that we'll get more updates as soon as they have more information, and he apologized once again for the delay and inconvenience of this network outage.

Mizuho Investors Securities analyst Nobuo Kurahashi estimated that Sony could be on the hook for $1.25 billion in lost business. "It could take months for the security woes to settle, and how this may affect consumer confidence in Sony's online services in a long run is harder to assess," he told the Wall Street Journal. The data breach has taken the company's shares down six percent, and Sony executives are still trying to assess the impact of the outage on the company in the long term.

Sony is still expecting to have the service fully restored by May 31, according to Bloomberg. You can only imagine what companies like Bethesda think of this issue; sales of the high-profile online title Brink will suffer on the PlayStation 3. No one wants to spend $60 on a multiplayer game they won't be able to play online.

What Sony is offering gamers

Sony has already shared the plan to make things up to gamers in the United States, including a free month of PlayStation Plus and a year of identity theft protection. The company has also given some hints on what to expect for European gamers.

"As I have explained previously, creating a similar offering for the many countries within the SCEE region is a very complicated process," Nick Caplin, the head of communications for SCEE, wrote on the SCEE blog. "Each country has a different way of handling identity theft; some offer relatively sophisticated services whilst others are much more modest." More details on how Sony will navigate the complexity of this issue should be available early this week.

Caplin also explained another program in which PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable users will be offered free games. "We will be offering PSN users the opportunity to select two PS3 games from a list of five, as well as offering PSP users the opportunity to choose two games from a list of four," he wrote. "We will let you know exactly what games are available very soon." Let's hope this program makes it to North America as well.

With no end in sight for the short term, the outage will continue to hurt Sony's reputation in gaming, not to mention the sales of third-party developers and publishers relying on the PlayStation Network for their games. Once the dust settles, this will prove to be an expensive lesson in network security.

source

I'm pretty sure Sony will compensate us in more ways than 1, but not as much as we'd like them to lol. And as far as the network being down for the rest of the month- I'm not surprised they'd stretch it that far, but it's better than giving us a specific 'weekly date' that it's 'supposed' to be up, which only sets people up for disappointment.

They need this time to clean up- from the inside out..

Just sayin'.

Well if it this long at least we have a date now ><

we can only hope something esle dont come up

Wow, Billion dollar outage lol! Ahh they'll more than make up for that loss in know time, when it's finally back live on the 31st.

it cant bee!! NOOOO, dont matter im getting xbox tmmw so i have both consoles. :/

lol i have an xbox already :p

i wont waste my money on a ShitBox. I am patient enough to wait and play some single player games. I did grow up in the age of no online gaming after all.

i had mine before psn when down i didn't get just because psn down :p

Well many ppl have tho its mostly the kids that cant live without Black Ops. Hopefully this downtime will eliminate a few trolls from psn.

well i can live with online I have since the atari 2600 :p

No online doesnt bother me. The downtime completely wasting my subscription for DCUO does tho. I am waiting to see if I will get reimbursed for it still.

What will happen if hackers do something to PSN on May 31?

depends on what they do I suppose.

itll be back before may 31st.

they just dont wanna give a definitive start-up date and they also dont wanna give the hackers that "edge" of knowing the true start up date.

Plus , alot of other advantages as well.

I took the 31st date as when it will be up in full. they did say it will be turned on in pieces.

just more stupid lies from sony omg u guys believe and follow anyway they just tell u this hitt 2 get u 2 shut up and get off thier backs it will been up one day but i dont even think it wil be the 31 it may even be june before psn up and running so

hahahahahahaha so you believe the trolls of the web eh? either way it means nothing to me since I am not an impatient child trying to piss ppl off by being negative, like some people.....

hum child who me what the f*ck ever manson join ur butt buddies pyro and buzz and christmas they all want u

Whatd i do ? o_o!

dude u guys are sick but back to topic sony sux and we aint never getting psn back like it was

rhondatommy wrote:hum child who me what the f*ck ever manson join ur butt buddies pyro and buzz and christmas they all want u

lol this makes me also laugh because the post after this 1 says stay on topic lol. and 2 yr olds call each other butt buddys. my 11 yr old cusin would call u a fag if u said butt buddys that how old that sht is. god damn u make this ez.