April 21 PSN and Qriocity outage

[lumberslayer]

Can't expect much for free. Wouldn't see that with the competition. Doesn't seem like they are in a rush to get it back online either..

[Gord Lacey]

This has nothing to do with whether it's a paid service, or a free service. Their servers were compromised, so they pulled the plug and are putting things back together with added security. It's not like a new game came out and the servers couldn't handle it.

[Dioneo]

Originally Posted by lumberslayer

Can't expect much for free. Wouldn't see that with the competition. Doesn't seem like they are in a rush to get it back online either..

http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/03/x...preventing-fu/

[hugh]

April 21st

While we are investigating the cause of the Network outage, we wanted to alert you that it may be a full day or two before we’re able to get the service completely back up and running. Thank you very much for your patience while we work to resolve this matter. Please stay tuned to this space for more details, and we’ll update you again as soon as we can.

April 23

We sincerely regret that PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have been suspended, and we are working around the clock to bring them both back online. Our efforts to resolve this matter involve re-building our system to further strengthen our network infrastructure. Though this task is time-consuming, we decided it was worth the time necessary to provide the system with additional security.
We thank you for your patience to date and ask for a little more while we move towards completion of this project. We will continue to give you updates as they become available.

So now at April 25th and still not up despite them saying it would be a day or two.

Very bad PR.

Sony should be communicating daily on this and be more honest with customers.

[hugh]

Sony Playstation Network and Qriocity have about 75 million users. Don't know how many are active but that's a lot of users who didn't get online this past weekend.

In addition, to not knowing when they will be able to the use the service, many people now are wondering if their credit card information and other personal information has been compromised.

Considering the severity and the impact, Sony has really dropped the ball on communicating with customers and stained their reputation.

[99semaj]

Damn straight they have. Technical compromise aside, this is a PR fiasco which will haunt them for a long time.

They had an opportunity to present as an open a communicative company, and portray themselves as a victim of hackers, but instead they came off as a faceless, monolithic entity.

[Tezster]

First and foremost, they should be informing users of any potential security concerns relating to possibly-compromised personal information. If there wasn't any, then let people know in an officially released statement, instead of having to rely on rumours and 2nd-hand information from other news sources.

The lack of information and transparency simply invites criticism, and rightly so.

[Gord Lacey]

Here's the latest, just posted at the blog:

"I know you are waiting for additional information on when PlayStation Network and Qriocity services will be online. Unfortunately, I don’t have an update or timeframe to share at this point in time.

As we previously noted, this is a time intensive process and we’re working to get them back online quickly. We’ll keep you updated with information as it becomes available. We once again thank you for your patience."

[hugh]

When your entire PR strategy is your director of Social Media posting this on a blog, you really have to wonder what is going on at Sony.

They should have Press Releases coming out to official news sources and they should be quoting senior vice presidents and they should say a hell of lot more than "Unfortunately, I don’t have an update or timeframe to share at this point in time. "

Personally, I'm not impacted so its not a problem for me but, IMO, having a director of social media posting this type of comment on a blog is extremely insulting to the 75 million users who have concerns and want answers.

It will be interesting to see what kind of long term impact this will have on Sony

[audacity]

In the actual PSN interface, do they have a message to customers to clarify what is wrong, so people who aren't "in the know" don't spend hours troubleshooting their local network?

You know, like how Blizzard updates the WoW login screen whenever there are issues on their end.

edit: one of the other members of my guild made a song about "patch day" when things are often screwed up in WoW. Maybe a PSN version is in order.

[Tezster]

...having a director of social media posting this type of comment on a blog is extremely insulting to the 75 million users who have concerns and want answers.

Considering the kind of updates Sony are issuing, they might as well have Kevin Butler post updates on his twitter feed; at least then they can inject a small measure of humour into the situation.

[Dioneo]

Nice segue!



They also agree with Hugh...

They have a serious problem here, and as serious as their technology problem might be, it’s not the biggest one they have. Their problem is that they don’t know how to communicate about anything but their legendary prowess. They simply don’t have it. I mean, genetically. They need to find a human being, or hire one, and start an actual dialogue with users.

They need to do this last Friday.

[Spike4881]

Ha!!!! That's hilarious!

[Gord Lacey]

That's awesome.

[audacity]

Ars Technica did a piece on this:

PSN update: Sony isn't sure your credit card data is safe

Wow. If personal financial data of Sony's customers was compromised this could get ugly.