As I scratch a sixth hash mark on my glossy PlayStation 3 phat, I begin to wonder when the PlayStation Network will be back up. I, like others I know, bought Portal 2 for the PS3 specifically for the Steam connectivity and the complimentary copy for the PC. A shame I can’t sync my Steam account to my PSN account. A shame I can’t play the co-op portion of the game. A shame I can’t play anything on online for the PS3 at all. Mortal Kombat is relegated to arcade or couch multiplayer. MAG and Warhawk are useless. Not to mention the craziness that is Call of Duty: Black Ops multiplayer is out of commission. What is a world without kill streaks and trophies?
It’s a world without a sense of community. As much as fanboys love to evangelize the greatness of Xbox Live, PSN, at its core, was able to connect its fanbase even if only in rudimentary ways.
Who do we blame? To whom do we direct our nerd rage?
GeoHotz? Seems like he and Sony are settling their differences.
Anonymous? They have claimed that they’re not responsible for the outage. Then again, are they really a Borg-like collective of tech-savvy malcontents? Or are they just a rag tag group of random hackers with one voice stepping up to speak for them all? Since we really don’t know, he/she/they are living up to his/her/their namesake.
Is Sony the hapless victim? Or do they share some responsibility here? It is, after all,their own system. Sure it’s free. But being free doesn’t remove the expectation that it should work. Having no subscription fee isn’t a valid excuse when messages can’t be exchanged or when trophies can’t be synced. A free PSN doesn’t get a free pass if big name titles can’t be accessed for the online features they’ve become famous for. Sony makes no bones about it though. They have copped to their need to do something and have regularly updated their blog with statuses. I don’t know about you, but I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they’re doing their due diligence in getting the system back up and running as soon as they can.
That leaves us….waiting. While we wait, I suppose we can play through Portal 2‘s substantial single player campaign. Mortal Kombat‘s Challenge Tower is nothing to take lightly. I suppose there’s plenty to keep us busy while we wait for the all clear signal from Sony’s networking overlords. Until then, I will nervously sharpen my pocket knife for the likelihood that I’ll be scratching a seventh hash mark into my shiny, black Sony console.
UPDATE 4/26/2011: ApocalyPS3 Confirmed
Today, Sony via their PlayStation Blog, has come clean with the outage. From the blog entry:
“Although we are still investigating the details of this incident, we believe that an unauthorized person has obtained the following information that you provided: name, address (city, state, zip), country, email address, birthdate, PlayStation Network/Qriocity password and login, and handle/PSN online ID. It is also possible that your profile data, including purchase history and billing address (city, state, zip), and your PlayStation Network/Qriocity password security answers may have been obtained. If you have authorized a sub-account for your dependent, the same data with respect to your dependent may have been obtained. While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility. If you have provided your credit card data through PlayStation Network or Qriocity, out of an abundance of caution we are advising you that your credit card number (excluding security code) and expiration date may have been obtained.”
Let’s play it safe folks and take whatever steps you need to take to protect your personal information.
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