7 ms·

Sony Shuts Down PlayStation Network Indefinitely

59 points by illdave 15y ago

millerc 15y ago
Shouldn't this month be a wake-up call to drive the point that Cloud Services, SaS and all variations of "Live" content serve nobody else than the people selling us their projects? Amazon EC2, Sony PSN, Google's GMail outage last month and God knows who next should be made into poster children for this issue. We spent the last 30 years migrating away from mainframes towards decentralized PC computing; only to have the centralized version shoved back in our throats for no better reason than helping monetization. It's time people start realizing how much control they're giving away when they exchange a local product for a remote service, and for vendors to adapt to their user's well-being.
wardrox 15y ago
Where's the word "Indefinitely" from? It doesn't mean "as short a time as possible", or am I missing some context?
- Macha 15y ago
  Indefinitely in this case means without a definite end date. Sony hasn't announced a date to bring it back online, therefore it is shut down indefinitely.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- keeperofdakeys 15y ago
  They are probably referring to the fact that Sony have not said anything about how long before the service is restored. The title is misleading without the context of the article, maybe the title on this website should be changed to something less misleading.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
allenp 15y ago
This is exactly why PC gaming isn't dead. What I don't understand is why online gaming is huge for the one American console maker, but lags so far behind with the two Japanese manufacturers when for years and years we are told how wired Asia is. The Wii is too casual and Sony just doesn't get it? Seems odd. Meanwhile, Microsoft is making $1 billion / year on their Live service.
- Macha 15y ago
  PSN is up there with Xbox Live. You can't claim Sony doesn't get it. If Sony had charged for it from the start it would be equally profitable but marketing decided it needed to be free to compensate for the initial excessive cost of the console, and now they cant charge for it without annoying their entire userbase. A technical failure, like this outage is not the same as not understanding something's importance.
  - stinky613 15y ago
    The technical failings Sony has faced demonstrate, I think, conceptual flaws: if they understood the PSN's importance they should have exercised more care in designing it. I know that what I'm saying sounds like a cliche of 20-20 hindsight, but these are some pretty obvious security problems they've been dealing with. Giving trusted access based solely on firmware is one thing, but they've been sending plain-text credit card numbers with every transaction.
  - cube13 15y ago
    PSN really isn't on the same level of service as XBox Live, though. A lot of features(both for end users and developers) aren't included in PSN that come standard with the 360's SDK. This includes things like cross-game voice chat(free for one on one communication, pay for a larger party on the 360), system-level friends list integration(free), and matchmaking(technically a pay service). None of that is included with PSN, but is present in Live, which means that the individual developers are generally left to implement those features for the PS3.
  - roc 15y ago
    > "You can't claim Sony doesn't get it." I can and do. And I take issue with the suggestion that the PSN is up there with XBox Live. In users? Probably. In architecture, usability, desirability and integration? Not remotely. The alternative to Sony suffering from 'not getting it' is that they do get it and are short of money, ability or the desire to make more money. All of which seem a bit more unlikely than a possible culture gap. The PSN was created and launched looking like GameSpy from the 90s. They could have cribbed proper friends, matching, communication and content network integration from Steam or XBox Live. Both were up and functional and accepted improvements over the old systems for years before PSN debuted. But Sony didn't do that. And from their stumbled start, they continued to drag their feet on core PSN functionality, while simultaneously throwing a lot of cash, effort and press into Home. I don't know how you can reconcile that with a thesis that Sony does get it. Their ultimate answer to fixing the PSN seems to be waiting for third parties to take the reins. That is, they seem to be relying on Steam, Activision and EA's own systems that layer... more or less to the side of the PSN. It's a shift in network consistency, focus and usability that has happened to howls of complaint on the XBL side,but is being met with open arms on the PSN side. edit: pulled out a couple footnote refs i never actually drafted.
teraflop 15y ago
Already posted 8 hours ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2483970 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2483970
sebkomianos 15y ago
And so, while Sony is building the PlayStation Network, Nintendo is building a new console. Fun times ahead for the "japanese giant".
- culturestate 15y ago
  Does anyone else think that Nintendo's refresh cycle on the Wii is surprisingly short, by console standards? I wonder if they feel pressed to try to redefine console interaction yet again, after they were (arguably, I suppose) usurped in motion control by the Kinect?
  - cube13 15y ago
    Nintendo has traditionally had 5-6 year console cycles. So it's not really a surprise that they're releasing a new console next year.
  - JeremyBanks 15y ago
    I'll check. NES - 1983 SNES - 1990 ∆=7 N64 - 1996 ∆=6 GCN - 2001 ∆=5 Wii - 2006 ∆=5 ? - 2012 ∆=6 Interesting. It's not accelerating. For comparison: PS - 1994 PS2 - 2000 ∆=6 PS3 - 2006 ∆=6 ? ~ 2014 ∆≈8 XBOX - 2001 X360 - 2005 ∆=4 ? ~ 2014 ∆≈9 Extrapolating, we would now be due for all new consoles. Years are of first release. Wikipedia is the source for previous releases, Kotaku for the next generation (http://goo.gl/Eo7Ma http://goo.gl/Eo7Ma).
    - wccrawford 15y ago
      Sony has said in the past that they don't plan to release another console until 2014, actually. (From a quick search: http://www.techgadgetsweb.com/2622/xbox-playstation-coming-2014 http://www.techgadgetsweb.com/2622/xbox-playstation-coming-2... )
      - JeremyBanks 15y ago
        Thanks, I've edited that into my post.
hoop 15y ago
I wish Sony would at least push a patch that stops from trying to log me in before I can do anything. Netflix, for example, prompts me to login twice before I can play any videos. (Maybe it's Netflix that needs to push the patch?)
- bradleyland 15y ago
  This is just speculation, but I really doubt Netflix wanted the PSN sign-in requirement. The prompt that appeared the first time I had to log in seemed a little tainted with contempt for the matter.
yellowbkpk 15y ago
In the meantime I can't play multiplayer games with anyone (even when I walk over to a friend's house for a LAN game) because I have to sign in to PSN first and since the game makers make single-player campaigns so short I've already completed those. Hulu Plus, MLB.tv and Netflix are also inaccessible. My PS3 is unplugged and unusable "indefinitely". Luckily I kept my Roku player...

59 points by illdave 15y ago

Shouldn't this month be a wake-up call to drive the point that Cloud Services, SaS and all variations of "Live" content serve nobody else than the people selling us their projects? Amazon EC2, Sony PSN, Google's GMail outage last month and God knows who next should be made into poster children for this issue. We spent the last 30 years migrating away from mainframes towards decentralized PC computing; only to have the centralized version shoved back in our throats for no better reason than helping monetization. It's time people start realizing how much control they're giving away when they exchange a local product for a remote service, and for vendors to adapt to their user's well-being.

wardrox 15y ago

Where's the word "Indefinitely" from? It doesn't mean "as short a time as possible", or am I missing some context?

Macha 15y ago
Indefinitely in this case means without a definite end date. Sony hasn't announced a date to bring it back online, therefore it is shut down indefinitely.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
keeperofdakeys 15y ago
They are probably referring to the fact that Sony have not said anything about how long before the service is restored. The title is misleading without the context of the article, maybe the title on this website should be changed to something less misleading.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

allenp 15y ago

This is exactly why PC gaming isn't dead. What I don't understand is why online gaming is huge for the one American console maker, but lags so far behind with the two Japanese manufacturers when for years and years we are told how wired Asia is. The Wii is too casual and Sony just doesn't get it? Seems odd. Meanwhile, Microsoft is making $1 billion / year on their Live service.

Macha 15y ago
PSN is up there with Xbox Live. You can't claim Sony doesn't get it. If Sony had charged for it from the start it would be equally profitable but marketing decided it needed to be free to compensate for the initial excessive cost of the console, and now they cant charge for it without annoying their entire userbase. A technical failure, like this outage is not the same as not understanding something's importance.
- stinky613 15y ago
  The technical failings Sony has faced demonstrate, I think, conceptual flaws: if they understood the PSN's importance they should have exercised more care in designing it. I know that what I'm saying sounds like a cliche of 20-20 hindsight, but these are some pretty obvious security problems they've been dealing with. Giving trusted access based solely on firmware is one thing, but they've been sending plain-text credit card numbers with every transaction.
- cube13 15y ago
  PSN really isn't on the same level of service as XBox Live, though. A lot of features(both for end users and developers) aren't included in PSN that come standard with the 360's SDK. This includes things like cross-game voice chat(free for one on one communication, pay for a larger party on the 360), system-level friends list integration(free), and matchmaking(technically a pay service). None of that is included with PSN, but is present in Live, which means that the individual developers are generally left to implement those features for the PS3.
- roc 15y ago
  > "You can't claim Sony doesn't get it." I can and do. And I take issue with the suggestion that the PSN is up there with XBox Live. In users? Probably. In architecture, usability, desirability and integration? Not remotely. The alternative to Sony suffering from 'not getting it' is that they do get it and are short of money, ability or the desire to make more money. All of which seem a bit more unlikely than a possible culture gap. The PSN was created and launched looking like GameSpy from the 90s. They could have cribbed proper friends, matching, communication and content network integration from Steam or XBox Live. Both were up and functional and accepted improvements over the old systems for years before PSN debuted. But Sony didn't do that. And from their stumbled start, they continued to drag their feet on core PSN functionality, while simultaneously throwing a lot of cash, effort and press into Home. I don't know how you can reconcile that with a thesis that Sony does get it. Their ultimate answer to fixing the PSN seems to be waiting for third parties to take the reins. That is, they seem to be relying on Steam, Activision and EA's own systems that layer... more or less to the side of the PSN. It's a shift in network consistency, focus and usability that has happened to howls of complaint on the XBL side,but is being met with open arms on the PSN side. edit: pulled out a couple footnote refs i never actually drafted.

teraflop 15y ago

Already posted 8 hours ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2483970 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2483970

sebkomianos 15y ago

And so, while Sony is building the PlayStation Network, Nintendo is building a new console. Fun times ahead for the "japanese giant".

culturestate 15y ago
Does anyone else think that Nintendo's refresh cycle on the Wii is surprisingly short, by console standards? I wonder if they feel pressed to try to redefine console interaction yet again, after they were (arguably, I suppose) usurped in motion control by the Kinect?
- cube13 15y ago
  Nintendo has traditionally had 5-6 year console cycles. So it's not really a surprise that they're releasing a new console next year.
- JeremyBanks 15y ago
  I'll check. NES - 1983 SNES - 1990 ∆=7 N64 - 1996 ∆=6 GCN - 2001 ∆=5 Wii - 2006 ∆=5 ? - 2012 ∆=6 Interesting. It's not accelerating. For comparison: PS - 1994 PS2 - 2000 ∆=6 PS3 - 2006 ∆=6 ? ~ 2014 ∆≈8 XBOX - 2001 X360 - 2005 ∆=4 ? ~ 2014 ∆≈9 Extrapolating, we would now be due for all new consoles. Years are of first release. Wikipedia is the source for previous releases, Kotaku for the next generation (http://goo.gl/Eo7Ma http://goo.gl/Eo7Ma).
  - wccrawford 15y ago
    Sony has said in the past that they don't plan to release another console until 2014, actually. (From a quick search: http://www.techgadgetsweb.com/2622/xbox-playstation-coming-2014 http://www.techgadgetsweb.com/2622/xbox-playstation-coming-2... )
    - JeremyBanks 15y ago
      Thanks, I've edited that into my post.

hoop 15y ago

I wish Sony would at least push a patch that stops from trying to log me in before I can do anything. Netflix, for example, prompts me to login twice before I can play any videos. (Maybe it's Netflix that needs to push the patch?)

bradleyland 15y ago
This is just speculation, but I really doubt Netflix wanted the PSN sign-in requirement. The prompt that appeared the first time I had to log in seemed a little tainted with contempt for the matter.

yellowbkpk 15y ago

In the meantime I can't play multiplayer games with anyone (even when I walk over to a friend's house for a LAN game) because I have to sign in to PSN first and since the game makers make single-player campaigns so short I've already completed those. Hulu Plus, MLB.tv and Netflix are also inaccessible. My PS3 is unplugged and unusable "indefinitely". Luckily I kept my Roku player...