Sony Shuts Down PlayStation Network Indefinitely | Hacker News Reader

Sony Shuts Down PlayStation Network Indefinitely

blogs.wsj.com

59 pointsilldave28 comments

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.

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.

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.

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.

> "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.

To be fair, a service like steam could have the same problems, and if you aren't logged in you won't have access to your games.

This is only partially true. Steam has an offline mode (you should activate it at least once), which works fine. I usually play on long train rides, so it is a feature I use rather often. Most of my single-player games work without internet, if not, they usually have third-party protection like securom (pro tip: don't buy them).

If Steam crashes, SteamWork doesn't work (Cloudsync, Matchmaking, etc.), but thats like any other master server crash. Also, SteamWork syncing is true syncing, so you have all your game data on your device and accessible. Its not like Game for Windows Live where you have to be logged in to even access the save games on your computer.

Say anything about Steam, but they are pretty far ahead in the 'user-friendliness' department.

Except the offline mode in Steam is very finicky about when it works and when it doesn't, even IF you go through all the hoops and backdoors.

Otherwise, I've got nothing but good things to say about Steam (despite the fact that I still hold a special place in my heart where I HATE Steam for replacing WON)

Source: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8...

I still am hating on steam for:

a) steam startup is the biggest contributor to starting up any game I got on steam.

b) attempting to sell a steam account results in a ban. Well actually why the hell can't one sell their steam account in the first place.

Benefits:

No CDs. Yay.

Instant buying.

Sales.

Cloud Sync so I can uninstall games to conserve space until I want to play them again.

Does not inject rootkits for DRM. (EA games still do, but thats ok I pirate those)

Praise steam all you want but WON was still superior for mp half life mods.

I still play an hl mod that has been around for years and 90% of the times a user is dropped is because of steam.

I never used WON. The thing is I like Stardock's Impulse. All the benefits none of the crap.

The problem with impulse is that steam has the nice steam APIs for matchmaking and such that require steam. Can't use it if you sell on another store. Its the vendor-lock-in. I bought a game only later to realize I can't play with anyone I know (steam vs impulse online) and thus... well... can't win vs that.

Yeah, but that's a specific edge case. Half-Life was written years before Steam was probably even conceived. WON was built-in from the start, while ValveGUI/Steam was retrofitted into an existing architecture.

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.

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?)

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.

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...

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

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

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?

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.

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).

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-2... )

Thanks, I've edited that into my post.

Yes, that's was with current standards though. And current standards are: Nintendo showed the way, Microsoft and Sony followed.

What if Nintendo shows another way and proves successful again? Nintendo is most probably releasing the new console in Christmas next year. Can the other companies let it alone in the market for a whole two years? (Provided its a good system, of course, in which case Kinect and Move won't be much of a competition)

> It looks like we're due for all new consoles soon.

"New gaming consoles from Sony, Microsoft not due until 2014"[1]

[1] http://www.betanews.com/article/New-gaming-consoles-from-Son...

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

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.

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.

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