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Comment by cubicle67 | Hacker News Reader

serious question (I don't own a PS3 (or an XBOX)) - is it not still playable offline, or is it like these new drm infested games I keep hearing about that require you to be online even for single player games?

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I mostly use my ps3 as a Netflix machine now-a-days (new baby) and have been very frustrated with the PSN downtime since Netflix won't let you login to their service unless you are logged into PSN (for some reason). To me that means my TV has seen very little use and I get to watch shows on my 13" mac. :(

Overall I am very disappointed in having the PSN be so key to the ps3 experience while the PSN, to me, is pretty worthless and poor even when it is working.

i'm able to still use netflix after getting 2 login failures on my end... it's a hassle but it's not blocking me from using it entirely.

Yeah, just keep retrying the login. Once you see the 'cover' images of the netflix titles you can cancel the login screen and use netflix with no problems.

The PS3 version of Portal 2 has a code to activate your copy of Portal 2 on Steam, and play it on PC or Mac. But you have to log in to PSN and Steam at the same time to sync up the accounts, and so as long as PSN is down, I can't install Portal 2 on my PC.

Also, the only reason I play PixelJunk Shooter is for the online leaderboards, which aren't available without PSN.

I use Netflix and Hulu Plus for all of my television watching (I don't have cable tv). Both of these seem to be tied somehow to the playstation network login, even though they use non playstation network credentials to actually authenticate me as a paying user. As mentioned below, Netflix still works, but with an annoying sequence of failed login attempts before letting you in and Hulu sometimes works with the same process sometimes doesn't work at all.

So while it's obviously not the end of the world, it is extremely frustrating to sit down to relax and watch a show and to be told that you just can't because of the playstation network, not because either of the content services arnen't working.

I think the biggest problem is that Sony has been totally opaque throughout the whole process. This has been going on for more than a WEEK now, not just two days, and until the blog post had not acknowledge in any way that there was a problem. Even though message boards were littered with people reporting problems.

I had no idea...

thanks for the answers

The vast majority of games are playable offline, there are some new ones that require you to be connected to the PSN though in order to combat the custom firmware 'threat'.

AFAIK all disc-based titles that have a single-player mode must be playable offline in order to be licenced for manufacture. If it tells you that you need to download anything to continue, try detatching the network cable and restarting the device so that it's purely offline.

This is correct, as I understand it. You can disable networking in the XMB for the same effect.

Yes you can, but offline play and multiplayer games are non-comparable!

It's a good excuse to visit someone in person.

Not if you've been out in the sun, drinking for pretty much four days with... gasp... other people

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