Gaming, Technology, and Whatever

Sony wants to get back together with you

May 012011

A quick follow-up on Funkmaster’s post from Thursday: On 4/30, Sony released more details about restoring PSN and attempting to woo back customers. Not everything is set in stone, but it’s worth looking at the press release/blog post. Sony is promising a “Welcome Back” program that includes the following features: Each territory will be offering selected PlayStation entertainment content for free download. Specific details of this content will be announced in each region soon. All existing PlayStation Network customers will be provided with 30 days free membership in the PlayStation Plus premium service. Current members of PlayStation Plus will receive […]

What Can Sony do to Win You Back?

Console Gaming 4 Responses »

Apr 282011

Assuming you’ve jumped off the Sony bandwagon given everything that’s happened and how it was handled, what would it take to get you back on board? Sony says it will evaluate compensation options after they get PSN back online, so now is a great time to give them some suggestions. When Xbox Live went down for a couple days around the holiday season 2 years ago, Microsoft gave everyone a forgettable XBLA game. Of course, the PSN downtime and the fallout from that is much more catastrophic. In discussing the issue with various friends, family and colleagues, the question came […]

Crysis 2 to be playable; news at 7

Gaming, PC Gaming 1 Response »

Apr 272011

According to Crytek staff posting in the official game forums, a hefty Crysis 2 patch is on the way. The promised changelog includes some welcome bugfixes, but the most striking improvements are at the top of the list: “Vote-kicking feature added; Further improvements to anti-cheat measures.” I found the multiplayer side of Crysis 2 to be consistently more enjoyable than online play in both Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops. That sound like damning with faint praise, but the core shooting and movement systems are polished and satisfying. Maps are generally better than we’ve seen in recent online shooters, too. […]

Apple Responds to Location Tracking Concerns

Technology News 7 Responses »

Apr 272011

Apple today posted a Q&A piece on their website, outlining exactly what location information the iPhone stores and how it is used. The short version is that the iPhone maintains a cache of wifi hotspots and cell towers in the area to help better assist apps that use location services. This allows your phone to find your location much faster than if it used GPS alone. So even though the tracking is no where near as invasive and sinister as many media outlets have incorrectly reported, Apple will be making some changes in an update in the near future. […]

Sony Admits Your Personal Data Was Stolen

Console Gaming 4 Responses »

Apr 262011

Sony Admits Your Personal Data Was Stolen

So, I totally acknowledge that we’ve done nothing but Sony/PSN stories for close to a week now, but this unfolding saga has been dominating the news. I figure one more post on the subject was important, more from a public service announcement standpoint. Sony finally admitted that during a security breach last week, an outside source gained access to all PSN usernames, passwords, email address, mailing addresses, phone numbers, birthdays and most likely, credit card data. That’s pretty much the worst case scenario picture I painted last week. We already know that Sony has handled this crisis totally wrong, as […]

Sony Through the Looking-Glass

Console Gaming, Gaming 4 Responses »

Apr 262011

I want to follow up on yesterday’s post with a question: What would the past week have looked like if Sony actually understood the current research into effective, real-world crisis management? How could Sony have handled this situation if they’d wanted to, you know, do a good job? Let’s see how things might have turned out differently. Rewind Within an hour of the outage, Sony posts an official statement on its PSN blog and Twitter feed – maybe something like, “PSN is currently down. We hate downtime, and we’re working as hard as we can to get things running again. […]

What is Sony doing?

Console Gaming, Gaming 4 Responses »

Apr 252011

More to the point, actually, might be the question: What is Sony not doing? One no-brainer answer is “effective crisis management”. It might seem a little over-entitled for a bunch of relatively affluent gamers to whine about being locked out of one online network for a few days. From Sony’s perspective, tho, this is a massive crisis – one of the biggest hits to their brand in a decade or more. The PS3 has long struggled in the marketplace, especially in the US, and Microsoft seems to have lost little time in capitalizing on Sony’s most recent problem. Destructoid reports […]

PSN Down for 4 Days and Counting, Sony Blames Hackers

Console Gaming 8 Responses »

Apr 232011

PSN Down for 4 Days and Counting, Sony Blames Hackers

So it’s all over the internet about how the Playstation Network has been down for 4 days with no indication as to when it will come back online. Some may not express much concern about it, by just dismissing it as some whiny gamers not being able to play online, and state the fact that PSN is free compared to Xbox Live…what’s the big deal? It’s actually a fairly large deal, if you look at the whole picture. No PSN has lots of ramifications. Let’s start with the easy ones. No PSN means that the heavily-used-by-many Netflix app is completely […]

Gaming Deals Worth Talking About

Gaming Deals 2 Responses »

Apr 222011

Some good noteworthy deals worth passing along: First off, you can get 25% off of orders over $19.99 at Direct2Drive when you use coupon code “bunny”. While you’re at Direct2Drive, Crysis 2 is even a bit steeper discount at 30% off, today only. Also, if you’re looking for a little iOS gaming, be sure to check out Dead Space HD for the iPad, as it’s on sale for the magical price of $0.99. This game has been optimized for the iPad 2 (although still compatible with the first iPad), so it’s a great game to show off what the new […]

PSN Down for a “Day or Two”

Console Gaming 5 Responses »

Apr 222011

Ah, Sony. As if annoying us with frequent, slow as molasses updates that provide no additional functionality wasn’t enough, they give us vague explanations as to why PSN has been down, and nonchalantly tell us that it’ll be down another “day or two.” Yeah, you read that right. The “hacker group” Anonymous claims they played no part in this recent outage, and had previously vowed not to attack any Sony services that would effect end users, so something else is going on over at Sony HQ. Good thing there wasn’t any new releases this week that Playstation users would want […]

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