Sony Could Face Developer Exodus On PSN 186
donniebaseball23 writes "As the PlayStation Network outage continues, developers are feeling the economic pinch. There's been no word from Sony on whether they'll compensate companies who produce games for PSN, but Capcom has already said it's losing potentially 'millions' from the downtime. Worse yet, developers who rely on PSN revenues may jump ship if they aren't compensated, warns Dylan Cuthbert, creator of popular PSN game PixelJunk. 'I have a feeling they [Sony] are thinking about doing something or they will lose developers, which of course is pretty bad for them,' he said."
While a major shift away from the PS3 is unlikely — downtime or not, developers don't want to lock themselves out of such a big piece of the market — it does have undeniable negative effects on some companies. For example, Bethesda's FPS Brink, which focuses heavily on multiplayer, launched without that capability for PS3 users. You can bet Microsoft will use this outage as a selling point for exclusivity or Xbox-first arrangements.
Try something new (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not just make the games single player stand alone and ADD the networking stuff on as another mode. That way, the games don't require PSN for people to play them. Or use your own 3rd party server which would probably be even worse.
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People gets insane without online modes.
No, really, I was shocked to know myself. Now kids go like "single player games suck" and such things.
Complication.. (Score:2)
Think they are talking about the developers who only do games not available on media. Typically cheaper and by smaller groups of developers, frequently independent of large publishers. We are talking about developers for whom the barrier to entry for creating and distributing media is too high and/or incurs a cost too high for the type of game.
As much as I'm displeased with the current state of affairs of 'owning' your purchase brought on by XBL, Steam, PSN, etc. (it being a step ever further back from co
Developer signup page is down (Score:2)
Think they are talking about the developers who only do games not available on media.
You're right. Since the incident, new developers haven't even been able to sign up for PS3 devkits. A press release [eventnewscenter.com] advertising SCEA's programs for developers mentions a web site for signing up [scea.com] that has been down for at least the past month.
Re:Try something new (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not just make the games single player stand alone and ADD the networking stuff on as another mode. That way, the games don't require PSN for people to play them. Or use your own 3rd party server which would probably be even worse.
In most competitive games there is no bank of dedicated servers -- one of the player's machines is the "server". Why not simply allow unranked matches between peers?
For example, "Unranked Matches > Custom Match > Join Server > Enter the IP of the game server to join."
Thus, when PSN or XBL is unavailable (which has happened for maintenance, it did piss me off) the players will still be able to play. In PSN's case, since it's already free, WHY NOT? It's not like they'll be losing money by doing so.
The secret joke of the "online" is that it's just a DRM mechanism designed to keep people from playing games -- Eg: I can't play Halo2 online in a custom match, even though all of my friends have started the game, and our XBoxes are talking to eachother (party chat) and all of our consoles know that the others' have loaded the game -- we can verify this by looking at the Halo2 icon next to our names on the friends list...
So, then we fire up OpenVPN and join a system link game over the Internet, and we're all playing Halo2 online -- XBL was not even needed for this -- We're just using it to coordinate our play-times and for the voice chat feature.
If you've ever seen "Selecting New Host" or other similar message, you'll realize that the XBL and PNS is actually just made up of the machines everyone purchased (Host == Server). Only a small number of "matchmaking" and/or media / score tracking & DRM servers exist in comparison to control how the masses play their games. In the case of Halo2 (and all original Xbox games) they've artificially obsoleted the games' Internet play features -- They want you to play the new games, not enjoy the older games.
Personally, I won't buy a game that doesn't support system link (LAN play) -- VPN stands for Virtual Player Network to me.
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Enter the IP of the game server to join
You're connecting to someone else hosting a game. The mentioned scheme would still work, you would just just wouldn't be able to host games. Right now, PSN/XBL work like this and require some firewall hole punching due to the peer-to-peer multiplayer. Right now, you would be detected as having either a "strict NAT" on Xbox or a "Type 3" on the PSN, essentially meaning you aren't able to host games. It would work the exact same as it does now, you're just manually
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Because my hardware firewall doesn't allow this due to the security settings I have and I'm not opening it up just to play a game.
Well that settles it then. There exists a Slashdot user for which this solution will not work. Time to throw the whole idea out the window and start from scratch.
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Makes it sound like you're dismissing it simply because you don't like it.
Re:Try something new (Score:4, Informative)
Why not just make the games single player stand alone and ADD the networking stuff on as another mode. That way, the games don't require PSN for people to play them. Or use your own 3rd party server which would probably be even worse.
You mean like PC games have been doing since the 90's?
How novel.
MS/Sony dont want to do that because they miss out on all the revenue of being the only online service available. "But PSN was free" I hear you ask, well it was free for you but not for the developers who have to pay licensing fees for it which came out of the RRP of the game you bought so I guess it wasn't so free (and all that personal information they get from it too).
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that would require effort, something current game companies are pretty low on
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Better yet... allow for openly run multiplayer servers like PC games have done since the beginning of online gaming (even if they have begun to go the console route more often).
Whether it's games, movies, music, or ebooks, we're increasingly becoming at the mercy of publishers and distributers in order to continue to enjoying the content that we have purchased.
It sucks, and it's going to get worse if people don't start demanding change.
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Demanding is an interesting concept. I find the idea of being dependent on a network connection so unacceptable, that I haven't bought any games recently. I doubt that the game companies know or care.
P.S.: If you really care, you should put in some time developing games that are open. Nethack has been done several times, but there are also "starter versions" of SimCity (LinCity?) Civilization (FreeCiv) etc. Card games don't really need much help, but Pysol could use aid in converting it over to Python
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Demanding is an interesting concept. I find the idea of being dependent on a network connection so unacceptable, that I haven't bought any games recently.
When I say "demand", I don't mean whining on message boards. What I was thinking was insisting on this features from developers, and if they aren't doing it, then don't buy it and let them know why. Arguing "not accepting" versus "demanding' is just getting into a semantic argument.
However the problem is that losses in sales will just be blamed on piracy, and too many people have insisted on getting the newest version of Madden and don't care when multi-player support gets yanked out of their old version.
Re:Try something new (Score:5, Funny)
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Are you insane you cant trust the consumer to even hold a disk they may Selfishly to a terrorist act of sharing that disk with a friend that did not pay for the right to play it or WORSE invite others over to play it. What is needed is the console to NOT have any drives or even processor, but the games are played on the local servers safe in our bunker 30 miles below the surface away from the dirty disgusting consumers.
That along with our lobbying to get implants required on all gamers so we can blind them
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Of course I support the "at birth implant" lobbyists, it's the best course of action until we develop the much needed fetal augmentation. I only hope we get the research funding bill approved.
- Also, thanks to th
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BRILLIANT! built in mind wipes of all players! You're going to be CEO soon!
Offline multiplayer (Score:2)
As much as I would ordinarily agree with focusing on a decent single player game, some games just aren't meant to be single player.
Then I guess developers should quit taking split- or otherwise shared-screen multiplayer modes out of video games.
Re:Try something new (Score:4, Insightful)
Multiplayer *is* new. Or at least the idea of making a game that only plays online is. It is perfectly reasonable to make a game that is designed to be played online. Think of how boring WoW or Eve Online (I'm not a big console player) would be in single player mode
Considering that Eve Online is just a 3D realtime Trade Wars 2002 [wikipedia.org] (which is a game from 1984, not 2002), and considering the countless other MUDs, online-only games aren't that new of an idea.
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Um, how old are you? Multiplayer *is* new. Or at least the idea of making a game that only plays online is.
John Daleske's Empire, 8-player networking. Turn-based strategy. 1973.
Jim Bowery's Spasim, 32-player networking. 3D shooter/simulator. 1974.
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Um, how old are you? Multiplayer *is* new. Or at least the idea of making a game that only plays online is.
John Daleske's Empire, 8-player networking. Turn-based strategy. 1973.
Jim Bowery's Spasim, 32-player networking. 3D shooter/simulator. 1974.
No kidding. I'm not old enough to remember the 70s, but still ...
Island of Kesmai, 100+ player MMoRPG (ala WoW). 1985 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_of_Kesmai [wikipedia.org]
In 1984, CompuServe debuted Islands of Kesmai, the first commercial multiplayer online role playing game. Islands of Kesmai used scrolling text (ASCII graphics) on screen to draw maps of player location, depict movement, and so on; the interface is considered Roguelike. At some point, graphical overlay interfaces could be downloaded, putting a slightly more glitzy face on the game. Playing cost was the standard CompuServe connection fee of the time, $6 per hour with a 300 baud modem, $12 for a 1200 baud modem; the game processed one command every 10 seconds, which equates to 1 2/3 cents per command.
(from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_online_games#Commercial_timesharing_services [wikipedia.org])
not to mention some of the other games on CompuServe at the time: ... CompuServer Information Systems, still remember my account numbers)
(Ah, good old CI$
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MegaWars [wikipedia.org] ASCII based real-time/turn DECWARS combat (up to 8 players on t
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"Um, how old are you? Multiplayer *is* new. Or at least the idea of making a game that only plays online is."
Older than you, child.
Learn what a multi-node BBS with Door Games is.
The Pit - the original MultiPlayer Deathmatch.
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7 Think of how boring WoW or Eve Online (I'm not a big console player) would be in single player mode, for example. 7
Single Player World of Warcraft...
You mean Diablo 1 and Diablo 2? Or Neverwinter Knights?
Granted it's not EXACTLY the same, but single-player 3rd-person fantasy RPGs are fun and used to be popular.
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As for not using PSN, that's a bit overreactive, don't you think? I'm not a PS3 developer, but I imagine leveraging PSN for online play cuts down on dev time significantly.
Why would you think that? What you do you imagine they save time on?
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No, you cannot.
Example games: Red Dead Redemption, GTAIV.
None work.
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I have definitely earned trophies in GTAIV while playing offline. The game as originally released didn't have trophies, but once you patched the game (and started a new save file!), you could unlock them both on and offline.
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I turn on my RDR: I get "Cannot connect to PSN, Trophies are unavailable."
Good for them. (Score:2, Insightful)
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The problem is centralized servers; you shouldn't need to rely on any company's server to play; every online game (except maybe MMOs) should come with a dedicated server binary, not only to avoid downtime as to prevent forced shutdowns (like the MGS3 servers, who were shutdown less than a year after the game was released).
Offline multiplayer (Score:2)
*unplugs network cable from gaming PC... Hmm... Team fortresses online multi-player does not appear to work offline.
*turns off WLAN router... Yup... Super Smash Bros. Brawl's offline multiplayer still works. If another console maker has worked around this problem for the most part, why can't PC games and PS3 games offer offline multiplayer?
if more games had a draconian DRM that prevented access to single player modes while PSN is down
Several games sold on PSN in fact do phone home in single-player mode, in order to counter what studios consider to be misuse of the PS3's PSN game sharing feature.
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So do PSN and Xbox live. I'm assuming this story is about potential lost sales. Funnily enough I expect developers will get more sales in the month or two after PSN is back online, as people get to play better demos with PSN Plus.. if I can't play a demo of your game, I will not buy it unless it's super cheap or very well known for being good.
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Unless I am mistaken, offline mode in Steam requires you to be online to activate it, so it only helps you when you know that your Internet is going away, but doesn't help much when the network has an unplanned downtime.
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Yes, but Steam doesn't let people *buy* games while offline, which is what Capcom is rightly angry about right now. If Steam went down for 3 weeks, you bet your ass game developers would be as angry at Valve as they are at Sony now.
Being able to play games offline is a total non-sequitur. Both PSN and Xbox Live Arcade let you do that-- *once you've purchased the game*.
Sony dug their own grave (Score:4, Informative)
I have just sold my POS PS3 at a bargain basement price, and I will never be buying another piece of hardware or software from them ever again. PSN fiasco isn't the only reason to hate Sony, just another in a long line.
Good riddance
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I know I'm selling Portal2 this weekend due to the PSN outage, it's a shame as Valve promised the PS3 experience to be the best out of all the versions and now I'll never know what it could have been!
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If it's the co-op you're feeling that you're missing out on, then it is worth hanging on for. I finally got around to doing the co-op mode (PC version) the other day and it really is incredible. Like nothing I've ever played online before. Just make sure you have a co-op partner lined up who you know well and who hasn't played it through before. If you don't have such a partner, it probably won't be anything like as good. Some of the puzzles require a hell of a lot of trust and co-ordination between the pla
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"Some of the puzzles require a hell of a lot of trust "
why? do you have to send them naked photos of yourself dressed in bondage leather that they use to get to the next level and you need to trust they wont post them to the internet? Or does portal 2 come with electrodes that shock your testicles and the other player has control of the shock power?
IT's a fricking game, you don't need to "trust" them at all.
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What he means by "trust" is that, for example, in some of the more complex puzzles, one person will be flying through a set of portals and the other person is required to place a new portal in precisely the right location to send the first person flying across the map, and it's really easy to screw your teammate. I played it recently with my brother, and you better believe we fucked with each other at first. But it is true co-op in the sense that you must work together in order to progress. It is impossi
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This is why you probably won't be asked to play Portal 2, or in fact any game, wi
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You can still play both single player and co-op offline. I don't see how the experience is different from the PC version other than that you can play local co-op. Even after playing through the single player campaign, I didn't find the split screen co-op to be a pain in the ass at all - probably because there are no mobile enemies to be aware of, and the fact it was on a 40" HDTV.
Re:Sony dug their own grave (Score:4, Informative)
I know I'm selling Portal2 this weekend due to the PSN outage, it's a shame as Valve promised the PS3 experience to be the best out of all the versions and now I'll never know what it could have been!
I think the claim that the PS3 version would be best was entirely based on it coming with a free copy of the PC version of the game, which is certainly the best playing option.
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Yeah, but to get that PC version required using the PS3 version of Steam. Which you can't right now because PSN is down.
I know a few people who preordered the PS3 versoin purely for the PC version at first, then the PS3 play later (not sure if they followed through if they didn't realize you need a PS3 to et the PC version).
Those with
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It Seems To Me... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It Seems To Me... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I remember the good old days when we tunneled IPX/SPX over TCP/IP in order to play multiplayer games. TCP/IP support in games was very late imho with most games supporting IPX/SPX, Null Modem or *shudder* DirectPlay support.
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Not on Mac. I was playing Warcraft II over TCP/IP via AOL when it first came out-- no waiting for the "Silver Edition" for us.
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That's because TCP/IP support was late coming to Windows, and you had to add it in with 3rd party stuff.
Seems to me it wasn't until '95 when Windows actually shipped with built-in network support.
I'm betting IPX/SPX wouldn't have been needed had Windows supported TCP/IP earlier.
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As a general rule I will never pay for anything if I can get it pirated. Because of assholes like me, well, they need to do stuff like this - requiring an internet connection for everything and trying to make games more multiplayer focused. Don't really blame them.
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The sad part about your statement is that I can't really think of a game thats locked down enough to keep anyone from playing a pirated copy. In some cases the pirated version ends up being better anyway since the DRM has been hacked out of it.
I even play on a pirate WoW server almost daily. Although to my credit I did buy game and pay Blizzard for a couple of years so they got there monies from me :)
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See I disagree.
Like say, Starcraft II. Sure you can play on private servers, but you greatly limit yourself in who you play on numbers alone.
Or say, Counter-Strike. Once again, sure you could play on private servers with your mates...but if you want to start doing wars, comps, and all the fun stuff, you need a proper steam account.
Or WoW. You seem happy playing on a Pirated Server. Now I don't play WoW, but many of my mates do. And they all claim they started on pirated servers ,but started playing on Frost
Change is gonna come (Score:5, Interesting)
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The most awful DRM incarnation award winner is still in my opinion the PC version of Assassin's Creed 2 when it was released, for which a conn
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Hopefully events like the PSN outage will give companies pause in their rush to move everything online.
Dear User,
The PSN outage over the past week has given us time to pause and reflect on our past practices. We are happy to conclude we're not only rolling in money, we're rolling in a shitload of money.
See you online.
Forever Yours,
Companies
Downtime? (Score:3)
Downtime? I'd think the developers would be more worried about how much smaller the market is for the PSN now.
I can't possibly the only one who decided instantly not to buy from Sony any more. (Okay, I admit, Sony-exclusive stuff will still probably draw me in, if it's good. But anything cross-platform is going to be bought elsewhere.) There must be more who decided all this pain (including the insults like the 30 days of free PSN+) is not worth paying for Sony stuff any more.
And the security issues? Obviously Sony doesn't know much about security. Their system stayed un-hacked only so long as they left Linux on the PS3 for the hackers to be happy. Sure, someone was working on hacking the PS3 through Linux, but he wasn't there. Immediately afterwards, people started hacking for real. And of course the online networks both got hacked... 1 of them WHILE they were fixing the first. They should have been aware.
No, if I were developing for the PSN (which I can't, because you basically have to be established before they'll consider you) then I'd been looking for greener pastures for more reasons than just the downtime.
Re:Downtime? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I think this is broadly right. Personally, I probably won't stop buying from the PSN altogether, but I certainly will move to using pre-paid points cards rather than letting them have the details of my (new, just replaced - thanks Sony) credit card. That adds a potential layer of inconvenience to purchases which will certainly make me less inclined towards impulse buys.
Plus, as an owner of both a PS3 and a 360, it's yet another reason to favour the latte when making decisions on which platform to buy multi-platform games for. Unless there were glaring technical differences in the PS3 version's favour (a la FF13), I was already inclined towards the 360 on the basis that I prefer the controller and have more friends who also own 360s than PS3s (and hence a larger Xbox Live friends list). After seeing the PSN's dire resilience demonstrated, these decisions are going to become pretty much no-brainers in future. So I'm only likely to buy single-platform exclusives for the PS3 from now on.
Meanwhile, developers inclined towards giving Sony those exclusives are going to be thinking their decisions through very carefully. After all, the PSN has been painful to a lot of game developers - not just those who have seen PSN launches postponed or games launch with multiplayer not functioning, but also those who have DLC as part of their business model (which, like it or not, is most of them these days). Bioware haven't been shifting any Dragon Age or Mass Effect 2 DLC on the PS3 since the PSN went down. Gust haven't been selling any Ar Tonelico Qoga DLC. Black Ops: Escalation? Forget it. Now in some cases, customers will just postpone their purchases until the PSN store comes back up (which is likely to be the final component to do so), but in other cases, they'll have "moved on" from the game in question and the sale will be lost forever.
There's been a lot of hyperbole about the impacts of the PSN outage and data leak. I find it very hard to imagine large numbers of people rushing to trade in their PS3s. In fact, largely due to a lack of new releases that have interested me since Portal 2, I've spent the last few weeks using my PS3 way more than I normally would as I work through my backlog of games I've been meaning to finish. I played Killzone 3's campaign through (and was very impressed by how well the PS Move controls work). I sank 40 hours into Ar Tonelico Qoga (one of the few Japanese RPGs of this console generation to be actually good). And I finally got around to finishing the first Uncharted game. The PS3 has a large installed base now and, after a slow start, a decent library of games. In the immediate future, it isn't going anywhere.
The damage for Sony will, I suspect, be more subtle and long-term. There will be changes to how customers spend their money in the PSN store that could prove painful over time. And there will be damage to Sony's commercial relationships with the wider industry that could take years to repair. Compare how Nintendo managed to annoy a huge chunk of the industry (including, critically, Squaresoft) through sheer arrogance during the transition from the SNES to the N64, with the result that despite the SNES's dominance, the N64 and Gamecube died a slow death due to lack of third party developer interest (a problem which still afflicts the Wii to some extent). Sony are running a high risk of finding themselves in a similar situation now - you mess with your partners' bottom lines at your peril.
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Same here, and I'm thinking of doing the same for my XBox Live purchases, especially since Microsoft doesn't make it easy to remove your credit card from their billing system. Oh well, not like the one that's in their system is valid anymore.
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I hadn't heard of anyone dumping their PS3, but I guess that's a logical consequence of not buying any more games, if you tend to sell the ones you already have.
I have quite a library of games for PS1-3 and I intend to keep my PS2 and PS3 for while to be able to play them.
And the point card thing is spot on. Sony will never have my credit card again no matter what. I really, really hate having to get a new credit card. This time it cost me $15 because I needed to have the new one rushed out, instead of w
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I can't possibly the only one who decided instantly not to buy from Sony any more. Okay, I admit, Sony-exclusive stuff will still probably draw me in, if it's good.
Yeah, got to love the way that your typical Slashdotter always proclaims their principles loudly and states their commitment to a boycott... until push comes to shove, reality dawns and anything *remotely* approaching self-sacrifice would be required (i.e. foregoing EvilCorp's latest instalment of Fanboy Franchise). In which case there's plenty of backtracking and a convenient get-out clause that shows just how wishy-washy they were in the first place.
Oooh... you might be more likely to buy some discounte
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Only if you already have it set up. My PS3 died, and I bought a new one, but Netflix on the new one won't let me activate it until PSN comes back up.
PixelJunk is not a game (Score:2)
>> "...Dylan Cuthbert, creator of popular PSN game PixelJunk."
PixelJunk is a series of games, not the name of an individual game.
Sony is in denial (Score:5, Insightful)
They think this was all about stealing credit cards. A heist that large though plummets in value as it is too well known and the cards too readily canceled. I would imagine the market value for the stolen cards to be far less than a typical heist that doesn't become publicly known.
I really think this about punishing Sony for doing evil things. Whether you want to pick their DRM infatuation, pursuite of GeoHot, removal of other OS and any number of other things doesn't matter. Somebody was trying to send a message to Sony that in the real world a court room victory bought with the best lawyers you can find can still have a very real cost.
Estimates that put the cost of this in the billion dollar range have been making the news lately. Sony, you just need to ask yourself, was it worth a billion dollars, the loss of public goodwill and a number of pissed of developers? Whether or not Sony will stop playing hardball and start being the corporate bully is doubtful. In the end whoever did this will likely end up in prison, the only question is what lesson did Sony learn from this?
Re:Sony is in denial (Score:4, Interesting)
They think this was all about stealing credit cards.
Wonder if anyone shorted a massive amount of Sony stock before the news broke.
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Wonder if anyone shorted a massive amount of Sony stock before the news broke.
Quite a few people probably did due to the bad press they were getting before this scandal.
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I really think this about punishing Sony for doing evil things.
This would provide pretty good cover for someone who did just want to steal credit cards and other information they could profit from.
(The credit cards aren't the data I'm most scared about. The "answers to security questions" is what I'm most scared about. Suddenly, someone out there has the answer to a billion "mother's maiden name" and "first pet's name" questions. The damage from that is harder to contain than credit card theft, and is the single most troublesome aspect of this from my perspective.)
I
Let's be realistic here... (Score:5, Interesting)
They could face developer exodus ... but it probably won't happen. ... but it probably won't happen.
They could face customer exodus
My bet is that a year from now, this issue will have be a distant memory for the vast majority of people and PSN will be ticking along as normal.
I'm sure there are plenty of people who would like to see these issues cause Sony to crash and burn - but past history (with things like the rootkit) has shown that it is unlikely to happen.
Sorry, but just being realistic.
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Definitely not going to abandon my PS3, but it will be a serious consideration when the next generation rolls out. Hopefully Sony have learned a lesson here. If they don't tighten things up, they will be hacked again within a few months.
The only hassle for me so far was phoning up the bank to get a new credit card sent out. I don't play online games much, and offline games and blu-rays are still playing fine.
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You mean so that even more people can have their CC details stolen? I don't see that particular spin working :p
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BTW, there is already a paid-for subscriber system for PSN called PSN Plus, and it obviously didn't help security one jot.
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Yes, this.
Remember when Sony used rootkits surreptitiously distributed on things that appeared to be standard Redbook audio CDs and then used those rootkits to install secret CD drivers on users' computers, which contained no uninstaller and would render the drive inoperable if the user attempted a manual uninstallation, and which also left the users' computers open to invasion by other malware from other parties?
Remember all the people who swore they'd never give Sony money again? They ran out and bought
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A vanishingly small segment of the population did not. I have a 360 and a Wii, but no PS3.
Killing Lik-Sang, killing Sega... didn't even take a rootkit to piss me off.
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They were leaving anyway ... (Score:2)
... to do more phone and mobile development. Console gaming is a large but stagnant market. Mobile gaming is bigger and still growing very quickly.
The outage is only convincing more people to take evaluate where they put their development resources and it isn't looking good for *any* of the console makers.
That's right (Score:2)
developers who rely on PSN revenues may jump ship if they aren't compensated
I was going to hack my firmware and distribute my PSN-capable homebrew software, but now that Sony has shown they care nothing for its users, I'll take my business elsewhere.
Sony should go Steam (Score:2)
After playing Portal 2 on PS3, the multiplatform experience was a breath of fresh air. The PSN is not a money-maker for Sony -- just a reason to buy their console.
Steam already works on PS3 -- no more porting needed. Merging two large communities of players gives you a huge competitive advantage in the market over Microsoft and studios could publish truly cross-platform titles (competitive FPSes? Probably not. RPGs, strategy, racing, rhythm, fighting games? Sign me up!)
Lastly, Steam already owns the on
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Steam already works on PS3 -- no more porting needed.
I'm not sure you know what Steam is, that or you don't know what porting is. Steam isn't a runtime, just because it runs on PS3 doesn't automatically mean every game available through Steam magically runs on the PS3 hardware now.
Idle threats... (Score:2)
The whole statement doesn't make sense on the face of it. If they are "losing millions" from being down for one month, then clearly they are making millions when it's up.
After the dust settles Sony may lose some fraction of their customer base, but in the long run no game developer is going to give up on a platform with ~30 million customers just because of this fiasco.
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The whole statement doesn't make sense on the face of it. If they are "losing millions" from being down for one month, then clearly they are making millions when it's up.
And what's so wrong about that?
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The way it works is that you still save to the hard drive within the game. PSN+ subscribers just have an option in the dash to back that save up to Sony's servers, where it can then be downloaded onto another of your PS3s (because you've got lots of them, haven't you?) and still used. As supposed to doing exactly the same with a USB memory stick, or what have you.
Basically, it's nothing a PC owner with a Dropbox account couldn't achieve.
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One thing that really irritates me about the ability to copy/move saves from the PS3's hard drive to a USB drive is that some saves and content is locked and can't be copied. (I'm not sure if this the case when you use the built in backup utility or the PSN+ cloud backup).
I'm not positive, but I believe the PSN+ cloud backup WILL let you backup "protected" files also. (they had mentioned that it will let you backup/transfer files you can't normally backup)
I was planning on testing this with a friend, but didn't get a chance before the outage.
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PS3 and Xbox 360 play different types of games from Wii. So different, it's almost a different market altogether. You couldn't replace an PS3 gaming environment on a Wii... but you could get awful close with an Xbox 360,
(For non-game features, though, like Netflix, this could be a boon to Nintendo as it is to Microsoft.)
These kids don't seem to realize that Microsoft has a much richer history of evil than Sony does.
Microsoft was evil 20 years ago, and pretty neutral now. Sony's evil this instant, and has be
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I do too, but the Slashdot collective considers that "evil", and it's pretty well-known, so I just put it down as an example.
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You don't rate the patent lawsuits against Android devices and attempts to extort B&N to use Windows for the Nook as evil then?
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From what I hear, Xbox live went down for about 2 weeks round Christmas 2007.
There was an intermittent outage of some services, not a full service blackout.