Rumors are stirring throughout the industry that Sony may rediscover what it is like to actually serve its customers and to make money doing it. The Playstation Network is expected to go down on Tuesday for maintenance and return either 31 May or 1 June (depending on your region) with the storefront enabled. PSN was down for a month when a 12-year old from Bangkok accidentally hacked into it while performing a Google search for anime porn. The store has been down longer as Sony tries to figure out how to keep infants from exploiting their new super duper strong security measures.
Granted, Sony could just as well get hacked this weekend and bring the entire thing down again. You never know with these clownshoes. One would think Sony, a company many were surprised to discover actually researches AND develops technology and not bathroom products, would have understood how network/system security works and that their system was begging to be hacked. But apparently they were too busy counting and cashing checks to bother with such an insignificant problem, one that they themselves report will cost them nearly 200 million in losses. That is in dollars not candy coins or wishful thinking, mind you.
In other news, SONY IS RUN BY DEMONKITTENS FROM POOLAND!
What will you do first when the PSN Store is restored? Will you buy anything? Or will you try to hack it to see how much free crap you can get before the FBI kicks down your door?
That reminds me, once the network is back up and running, Sony has released information about their make-good rewards for account holders and also the identity theft protection plan that they will provide to anyone affected by the data theft. So, for the trouble you get some games, movies, Playstation Plus for 30-days, and identity theft protection all for FREE. If that is our reward for losing the network for a month, I hope someone brings it down for three months so I can get a free Madden 11 (or 12, what are they up to anyway) since I will NEVER buy another $60 packaged patch from EA again.
WARNING: the above links take you to the official Playstation blog, run by Sony. It is very likely that your personal info will be stolen, your car will be repossessed, your pet will pee on you while you sleep, and your significant other will leave you for an X-BOX 360 owner. Click carefully!
On a totally unrelated note, if you voted "Who?" in the poll on the front page, then you need to put down the Justin Bieber CD and discover the genius that is Bon Iver.