Sony Shuts Down PlayStation Network Indefinitely

Sony Shuts Down PlayStation Network Indefinitely(blogs.wsj.com)

36 points by thurgoodx 15 years ago | 30 comments

morganpyne 15 years ago |

A moderator from PSX-Scene.com gave an interesting in-depth explanation as to what is going on with the PlayStation Network on a Reddit AMA recently:

http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/gx6o4/im_a_moderator...

His take (and he admits it is speculation but it sounds quite plausible) was that a custom PS3 firmware called Rebug gave Playstations Developer-level access to the network, which allowed you to do a whole lot of things without much authentication (input from dev. consoles was trusted far too blindly). This firmware permitted all kinds of shenanigans, up to and including allowing credit cards without validation.

I haven't seen any official comment from Sony on the topic, but there is further speculation that a lot of stored information may have been compromised and that wholesale theft via unvalidated CCs has gone on. Quite a serious breach, and a very poor show on behalf of Sony to blindly trust user input like that from dev. consoles if this turns out to be true.

shii 15 years ago | |

As submitted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2482679

swaits 15 years ago | |

So, a non-Sony employee, on a non-Sony forum, admittedly "speculates" what appears to be a bunch of garbage nonsense, and that's newsworthy?

Groxx 15 years ago | | |

... while providing supporting evidence, in the face of Sony's utter silence aside from "down now, up when it's up"? Yes. That makes their link by far the most informative thing I've seen on this to date.

Groxx 15 years ago |

"indefinitely" is linkbait more than anything. It's not "indefinitely" in terms of "forever", which is how it's usually used - it's "an un-specified amount of time".

It's technically correct, but when you hear about something "shutting down indefinitely" you don't think "oh, that's all right, they'll be back up soon".

jhack 15 years ago | |

I've been following this news pretty closely and the wording of this article gave me that impression as well.

In the end, I think this is for the best, though. With the NGP releasing this year and with all the movement Sony's making towards Android + Playstation products, it just means more (potential) security risks as the network grows. Better to get it over with now before it becomes a bigger problem later.

rhizome 15 years ago | |

The funny thing is that it's not "technically correct," it's actually correct and used properly here (both prescriptively and descriptively). Your criticism has to do with the word being misused elsewhere when people or companies avoid using the word "forever."

Groxx 15 years ago | | |

"forever" is not mis-use, it's also correct and it's the more-common usage by far (in my experience). Let me google that for you: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...

ares2012 15 years ago |

Wow. Considering that you can't play Netflix on your PS3 without the Playstation Network operational and the article on the front page about Netflix being bigger than cable companies, I wonder how much this is affecting Netflix traffic. I realize you pay for Netflix whether or not PSN is working but then who has responsibility that you can't stream?

netflixworks 15 years ago | |

Actually I can still use Netflix while PSN is down, it does ask me to sign in twice but I can just press O after it fails and then Netflix works without an issue.

GrandMasterBirt 15 years ago | | |

Haha! Xbox wins. Well... kind of. I still won't buy one or pay for online... but well... no. I just use ps3 as a glorified netflix player. HA!

chadgeidel 15 years ago | |

You can play Netflix without the PSN. Just log in have it time out, then you are good to go. (I've heard a few folks need to go through the login process 2 or 3 times).

chc 15 years ago |

Wow. This has to be something bigger than just "Hacker brought down some PSN computers." Sony surely has disaster recovery plans for something as simple as a large swath of computers going down (for any reason), so it sounds like they must suspect something is fundamentally very wrong with the network itself.

bpfh 15 years ago |

Whether it be due to Anonymous or load from newly released hit games, PSN has been awfully flaky lately. Usually when PSN returns with a helpful integer error message, I hit Twitter and #psn to see if it's just me.

Frustrated with this, I took a few hours and wrote http://isthepsndown.com/. Obviously it's pretty useless at the moment, PSN being down wholesale, but I am hoping in the future it would save a few clicks whenever PSN barfs again.

ctide 15 years ago | |

Why force a click to see the result? Seems like a good way to ensure you get bogus data.

bpfh 15 years ago | | |

Good question. That's why I threw in the Haven't Tried option, but you might be right.

nodata 15 years ago |

I bought a PS3 with Linux support and PSN access. Now I don't have either. Maybe they could randomly disable my controllers next.

swlkr 15 years ago |

I don't want to sound like a fan boy or anything but I can't recall a time when Xbox live was down for more than a few hours.

netflixworks 15 years ago | |

Here you go http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2008/01/xbo...

The complaint describes the December outages -- chronicled on blogs and elsewhere -- that kept people from "accessing online play for several weeks. ... Xbox Live continues to deny subscribers access and has even issued apologies for their failure to correct server problems."

flexd 15 years ago | | |

Wasn't that just a 'local' outage? I have never experienced xbox live not working here in Norway. Guessing perhaps there has been problems with the US part of the network but Europe?

Groxx 15 years ago | | |

Know what the outcome of that lawsuit was? Press tends to follow the beginning, not the end, I'm having trouble finding anything :/

neworbit 15 years ago |

Man, I feel old, I remember when Sony was The Brand Name in consumer electronics. Between rootkits and intrusive behavior and this sort of thing... I can't think of the last time I bought something with the Sony brand on it. (To be fair, it was probably either a DVD... or a DVD burner.)

Groxx 15 years ago | |

I've returned a couple of their batteries for dying while under warranty. Beyond that, I avoid Sony like the plague. Hardware, software, videos, music, everything.

Bring back the company that made the Walkman, a cheap, DRM-free, durable music player, and maybe I'll change my mind.

hga 15 years ago | |

My family traces it to the '80s? when Sony moved a lot of their assembly to Mexico and the $$$ Trinitron TVs they then purchased were plagued with cold solder joints (which they could take care of but of course most consumers couldn't, at least not directly). For quite some time before they went all in evil as you note their quality went fitfully but steadily downhill.

Compare to e.g. my mid-late '70s Sony turntable, which due to it being direct drive is still fine (the auto positioning and end of record removal mechanism failed long ago but that's hardly essential). Built on a solid cast aluminum base ... they just don't make 'em like that any more.

yardie 15 years ago | |

They changed right after they started buying up movie production, music production, and game production. Then all the good engineering, good standards, and open nature were thrown out in favor of user lock-in, DRM, and piracy prevention.

If anything will be the downfall of Sony I have to say that Sony/Columbia Music started it. With their ridiculous copybit protection on DAT. How a million dollar division (media) dictates a billion dollar division (electronics) to come up with these schemes is beyond my comprehension.

desigooner 15 years ago | |

problem with sony is that they fail so much with pricing things .. they cannot charge as much or more than apple products because frankly the design and the build quality doesn't match up. I still remember them trying to sell a netbook for around 1K$ .. They just released a honeycomb tablet that might be priced at 600 when ASUS Transformer (similar specs) got sold out for pre-order at Amazon for 400$..