Tag Archives | Gaming

Sony Disables PlayStation Network After Security Breach

Posted by Dave Z on April 23, 2011 at 10:46 am

Sites and services go down all the time. Just ask Amazon. And all their customers. But they weren’t the only ones to suffer a massive outage this week, as Sony’s PlayStation Network (PSN) has been offline for several days now. After a long period of silence, Sony has finally provided some situational insight:

An external intrusion on our system has affected our PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. In order to conduct a thorough investigation and to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services going forward, we turned off PlayStation Network & Qriocity services on the evening of Wednesday, April 20th.

Of course what they’re saying is that they’ve been hacked. And until Sony figures out what’s going on and how to stop it, they’ve pulled the network plug. So the forensics team has probably been doing their thing, maybe law enforcement too, as the engineers bolster PlayStation Network defenses.

Unfortunately, Sony hasn’t provided an ETA for PSN service restoration. And I know several of my work buddies with PS3s are suffering from Call of Duty, Black Ops withdrawal. But I’m not sure they appreciated my repeated mocking suggestions to join me on the superior Xbox Live.

(This post republished from Zatz Not Funny.)

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Goodbye, DS Lite? Goodbye, Game Boy Advance.

Posted by Jared Newman on April 22, 2011 at 3:19 pm

After five years on the market, Nintendo may be putting the DS Lite to bed and focusing on its three newer portables, the DSi, DSi XL and 3DS.

The rumor, based on a leaked Gamestop memo, originates from a link that is now defunct, but Engadget has since confirmed the news with a Gamestop employee. The memo tells store associates to remove their DS Lite display boxes once all the current stock is sold, because they won’t be getting any more shipments. Nintendo has given its standard dismissal, saying that it “doesn’t comment on rumor and speculation.”

It’s no surprise that Nintendo would phase out older DS models as it introduces new ones — the original Nintendo DS was discontinued long ago — but as Matthew Green points out over at Press the Buttons, the DS Lite is the last model to support Game Boy Advance games. The Nintendo DSi removed the secondary cartridge slot that allowed this backwards compatibility. Incidentally, Gamestop held a big liquidation of Game Boy Advance games last week, and the store no longer accepts Game Boy Advance systems or games for trade-in.

In other words, this story is more about the end of Game Boy Advance than it is about the Nintendo DS. Thanks to backwards compatibility, DS games will live on through the DSi, DSi XL and 3DS — at least until Nintendo moves on to new generations of hardware and we do this whole thing all over again.

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Playstation Network is Down for a Day or Two

Posted by Jared Newman on April 21, 2011 at 11:59 am

Sony’s Playstation Network is down, and it may not come back up for a couple of days, according to the official Playstation Blog.

“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,” Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold wrote.

Europe’s Playstation blog previously said the company was investigating “the possibility of targeted behavior by an outside party,” but that message has since been removed. Hacking group Anonymous, which attacked Sony’s servers earlier this month, claims no involvement.

Talk about terrible timing. This week saw the launch of Mortal Kombat, Portal 2 and SOCOM 4, all of which have an online component. SOCOM 4 is a Playstation 3 exclusive geared mainly towards online play, and includes big incentives to buy the game new. In addition to disabling online play, the PSN outage affects the Qriocity music service, Netflix, MLB.tv and any other service requiring a PSN login.

Still, this isn’t quite as severe as the PSN problems that occurred in March 2010, when a leap year issue caused some users to lose data just by turning on their consoles. Sony didn’t relay that message to its customers until 16 hours after the first reports emerged.

[UPDATE: Sony says that the outage–still ongoing–is due to it taking down the network after a security breach.]

[UPDATE 2: Still no end in sight. Sony now says it’s rebuilding the network for added security.]

[UPDATE 3: Sony now says all users’ personal information was compromised, and credit cards may have been compromised as well. More details here.]

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Sony in Denial Over PSP Go’s Apparent Demise (Updates)

Posted by Jared Newman on April 19, 2011 at 7:42 pm

(See updates below)

Looks like the PSP Go is going out with a whimper.

A Sony Shop employee in Japan wrote on his blog that PSP Go production has ceased, according to Andria Sang, a Japanese games industry blog. Also, the Sony Store games page for Japan no longer lists the gaming handheld, and the product page says it’s out of stock. In the United Kingdom, Sony’s store lists the black PSP Go as out of stock, although the white model is still available. A UK retail source told MCV that no further stock will be supplied to the retail channel.

In other words, Sony seems to be letting PSP Go fade away, but the company isn’t ready to admit that the gaming handheld, which relied entirely on downloads instead of physical media, is kaput.

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Sony’s SOCOM Hits New Low (or High?) in Used Video Game Punishment

Posted by Jared Newman on April 18, 2011 at 7:36 am

Last year, a few video game publishers started withholding online multiplayer from used video games unless buyers paid $10 for an activation code. I figured that was just the beginning of the attack on second-hand sales.

Sure enough, SOCOM 4: U.S. Navy Seals charts a new course in punishing used game buyers, and it’s at once better and worse than the status quo of $10 online passes.

As described on the official Playstation Blog, SOCOM 4 will let all players access the game’s multiplayer portion — as it should, because online play has always been SOCOM’s main attraction — but used game buyers will miss out on special guns, game types, and other perks to be added later. To get these features with a used copy of the game, you’ll have to buy a $15 activation code.

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Valve’s Portal 2 ARG Culminates in Shrewd Business

Posted by Jared Newman on April 15, 2011 at 12:41 pm

For the last few days, the buzz among gaming blogs and Twitter was that Valve might release its mind-warping puzzle game Portal 2 on Friday, instead of Tuesday as scheduled. The speculation was sparked by an alternate reality game, which invited players to decipher images for clues of what would happen next.

As with most ARGs that are tied to marketing campaigns, participation is superfluous. Eventually all hands are shown either way, and so today we have a website that lays out the meaning behind the garbled messages: Yes, Valve will release Portal 2 earlier than expected, but only if people buy a $39 bundle of play any of 13 indie games from a bundle known as The Potato Sack.

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Wii 2 May Debut At E3

Posted by Jared Newman on April 14, 2011 at 3:56 pm

Well, this might explain this week’s rumored Wii price cut: Both Game Informer and IGN cite unnamed sources who say Nintendo will reveal a Wii successor at this year’s E3 trade show in June.

Neither story provides much detail. IGN’s Jim Reilly writes that the new Nintendo console is “significantly more powerful” than Sony’s Playstation 3 and Microsoft’s Xbox 360, and will be backwards-compatible with the Wii. Game Informer’s Matthew Kato says he’s heard conflicting reports on whether the console will match its rivals on performance, and can’t confirm backwards compatibility.

Both journalists agree that the console will support high definition gaming, and that Nintendo is showing off the console to publishers in preparation for a 2012 launch, although IGN also says there will be a “pre-announcement” this month.

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Wii Price Cut Rumor: And So It Begins

Posted by Jared Newman on April 13, 2011 at 9:36 am

Engadget’s Sean Hollister just re-kindled a great video game tradition: the pre-E3 price cut rumor.

A “trusted source” tells the blog that on May 15, Nintendo will drop the Wii’s price from $200 to $150. A May price cut would actually preempt E3, which starts on June 7, but could also set the stage for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 price cuts during the trade show.

It’s been more than a year and a half since any console maker reduced prices. Nintendo cut the Wii’s price from $250 to $200 in September 2009, just after Sony slashed prices on the PS3 from $400 to $300. Microsoft cut the mid-range Xbox 360’s price to $300 in September 2008, and has only redesigned the hardware and boosted specs since then.

The console market could use a boost, too. Although revenue was up in February, the industry shrunk in 2010 according to NPD. The Wii in particular has seen its dominance challenged in the United States by the Xbox 360.

But so far, the rumor mill has been fairly quiet. Michael Pachter, the oft-quoted analyst for Wedbush Morgan, said in March that he expects an Xbox 360 price cut at E3, with the Wii and PS3 to follow, but that’s just speculation. Juicy rumors have been in short supply. With E3 less than two months away, expect that to change.

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