PlayStation Network Outage Causes Huge Problem for Sony

If you are not a PlayStation user you can probably skip this article and smirk to yourself as you play Black Ops on your XBox or Wii. If you have a PS3 or any model that access the PS Network, you’re outta luck for multiplayer games or any games that must access the network.

According to Sony you’ll experience the following issues if you try to login to the Network:

• Not be able to access the PlayStation® Store
• Have difficulty signing in to the PlayStation® Network
• Not be able to play online games
• See a maintenance page when attempting to access the PlayStation® Network

This is Day 5 of The Massive PS Network Outage of 2011 and I feel for you if you own one. I’ve had issues with my PS3 over the last few days…  Getting apps like MLB.TV to connect due to the constant request for my login info (both the PS Network login and the apps logins end up in a weird recursive loops that you must quit to get out of) is incredibly frustrating. The only ray of hope is the the device still plays Blu-rays (and can access some BD content) as well as letting you login to the Netflix Instant Watch service IF you have patience to play with the login process a bit… After a few tries where it seems like it won’t work, it finally does and you’ll have access to your movie queue as well as other Netflix instant watch movies.

Beyond that, the PS Network is simply down and comatose for now… And if you’re a hardcore multi-player gamer, Sony’s site has no real answers for you… their site only serves notice that they’re working on it. Other blogs and news services note that Sony has admitted the PS Network was hacked, but they won’t say by who though the most obvious answer points to the hacker group “Anonymous”… but even they won’t lay claim to the denial of service attack (or worse). But in the end… the cause matters less to PS gamers and customers than getting back on the network to off their friends in seriously intense combat. Until Sony updates with news or the service magically comes back on (with no announcement in all likelihood), then it’s just a matter of sitting tight and finding myriad other things to do… like read a book or go outside and play, or something quaint like that.

This is a huge issue for Sony, and each day the network is down they’re liable to lose consumer confidence.  This outage combined with the recent Amazon cloud network issues have some folks asking if massive server farms at the mercy of hackers are truly viable alternatives to good ol’ disc-based software with no need for network access.  Still, the future points to the cloud as more effort is made to put games, business apps, media networks and other content on cloud-based delivery systems… systems that may always be vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks or far worse.

Sony, always aggressive in the protection of their network, seems stymied by this one…  and as the days go by, and gamers, their core constituency, are left without use of their favorite gaming platform, Sony has a lot to lose as players turn to alternatives such as the XBox, Wii and PlayStations begin to gather dust.  Worse for Sony, gamers may simply turn to their handheld smartphones…  nowadays, these small devices are giving them much the same gaming experience (including multi-player, slay-your-friends capability) as their console systems do.   Sony, you definitely have a dilemma on your hands.

Check back with HD Report for more updates as Sony works really, really hard on this little problem.