Speculation is hotting up over the possible relaunch date of the PSN Store, with many people believing (and everyone else hoping) that we’ll still see the store return by the end of May. If that turns out to be the case, Sony have got one hell of a week on their hands.
Impatient gamers will be desperate to get their hands on the free package that Sony have already outlined. While most people probably wouldn’t go out of their way to buy a copy of Wipeout, you can guarantee that the longer people have to wait for their free copy, the more annoyed they’ll be getting. Rumours on the Internet are Sony’s worst enemy at the moment, and with many gamers already angry about the PSN and store outages it doesn’t help when various sites wind everyone up with their “insider information” giving an accurate return date, which then turns out to be made up. Sony need to be ready with their Welcome Back package as soon as the store returns, otherwise the Interweb will explode with pre-pubescent angst and anger that Sony are “breaking their promise” to their customers. We’ve already got more than enough stroppy rants of YouTube as it is…
But while the random rumours are Sony’s current problem, you can be sure that the moment the store is back up there’ll be some hackers not far behind eager to see exactly how much stronger the new security is. All of Sony’s hard work (and you’ll be kidding yourself if you think they’ve not been working their collective nuts off) will come to a head in the space of a few hours. Does anyone really believe the hackers who took the PSN down initially will sit back and assume it’s secure? No. They’ll be going all out to do exactly the same thing again. Can you imagine the fallout if the PSN got hacked again which resulted in another few weeks of offline-only gaming? It doesn’t bear thinking about. Too many people have come to rely on being able to play their games online, there’ll be stuff hitting the fan from all possible angles.
Exactly what Sony have done with their security remains to be seen, and it’s probably something 99.9% of us will never find out. But for Sony to regain the credibility it’s lost over the last few weeks they need the next 7 days to go exactly to plan. No unexpected downtime, no glitches in the matrix, just a smooth and well-executed return to normality. Add to that a return of the store with the freebies available for those obsessed by them and the knowledge that our card details are secure and you can call it mission accomplished.
After that then maybe, just maybe, everyone can start to focus on the games again. Just in time for E3 too…
Of course they won’t sit back, at least not until Stringer steps down I guess.
I really hope Sony’s announcements about “additional testing and further security verification” aren’t a red rag to the hackers.
I was listening to the tested.com podcast last week and they, perhaps jokingly, said they expected the hackers next goal would be to take PSN down *during* Sony’s E3 conference…