So not only is the extent of the Sony data breach 30 percent greater than initially reported, but the latest news contradicts Sony's express statement last week that a "thorough investigation" revealed no breach of Sony Online Entertainment data.  Some investigation!

And Sony's idea of an apology is a 30-day subscription to its PlayStation Plus discount club?  The punchline is that games that are offered for free to PlayStation Plus subscribers are deactivated if the subscriptions lapse, so a one-month trial is nearly worthless.

I am astounded by Sony's aggressively tone-deaf response to this crisis to its reputation.  Is there no one in a command position at Sony with the faintest concept of customer relations?  No one who has considered that Sony's imperious attitude towards its customers is an anachronism?

Maybe Sony is betting on its vast customer base mostly having short memories.  Sadly, it's probably right.

All I gotta say is Microsoft has to be loving every minute of this.

"Well gee willikers, our high quality paid subscription service doesn't seem to have the problem our competitor seems to be having. When it comes to our paying customers, all we can say is 'we care'."

I heard they even unbanned consoles that were banned for being modded...

I figured we'd get into this topic eventually.

On the one hand, the flimsiness of Sony's network security is ridiculous; certainly after the hardware itself had been initially breached, and it was discovered that all PS3 games to that point - retail or otherwise - had used the same verification code, Sony ought to have taken it on the chin THEN and overhauled their security from the ground up before it escalated. Instead they duct-taped a firmware patch over the broken windows and figured that they had time enough to come up with something better before someone broke in again. They certainly deserve the beatings they're taking on this front.
On the other hand, I am loath to embolden through whining an over-entitled culture that sees blanket identity theft as an eye-for-an-eye response to the removal of OtherOS and/or the perceived insult to fellow hackers by way of prosecution. Even if they don't resell or abuse the information, they have no right to rob strangers of their sense of well-being just because they happen to do business with a company that hurt their feelings. Complete infants, all of them.

In short, there's no heroes here, just two disgruntled boxers aiming for a victory through decision by punching everyone in the audience.

For my part, I've changed all the information I can, and already monitor my statement diligently (there was an incident where the bank had fined me three times in a day for overdraft charge that hadn't occured - it was a debit card, for pity's sake - and after sorting it out I've been vigilant ever since), so I feel a bit safer than most. But I do believe I'm going to use PSN cards for online purchases henceforth.

That was apparently a glitch, and said consoles were promptly rebanned after a patch.

Fix your damn crappy d-pads and lack of good third-party controllers, MS, and maybe I'll care.

Sad to say, most companies have absolutely no concept of consumer relations - a company's stance about customers is that "There's always still more where they came from," and a disgruntled consumer, or even a riot of disgruntled consumers means nothing to them; they just don't want to do the work to keep people buying their product.

Basically every single company I've ever bought a product from has jilted me one way or another, usually along the lines of limited warranties, and products dying - or otherwise malfunctioning beyond restoration - after the expiration of said warranty.

Amazon, Apple, Best Buy, Comcast, Dell, eBay, HP, Motorola, Wal-Mart - just to name a few - they all have cum on their faces from f.'ing me over at one point or another.

Ironically enough, I've never had a Sony gadget malfunction or die on me, but I don't buy a whole lot of Sony products, either. Sure, the PSX and PS2, and I even had a Sony cellphone at one point, maybe a Sony TV here and there...well, I guess I've actually bought quite a few Sony products...

But, Man, am I still glad I never got a PS3...I have a cousin who's probably sore over this, though...

http://www.blisteredthumbs.net/2011/05/smoke-you-sony/

Heh,  yeah Sony has it's share of fanboys, but so do other franchises. Probably the most annoying fanboys and fangirls (that I've encountered) are the Final Fantasy ones. I still don't understand people who pick up this 5th remake (here in the US it's the 5th incarnation, I think it's something like 10th+ in Japan) of FF IV, and have nothing bad to say about it. Yeah, well I guess if you have nothing better to do these days than random battles (oh, and autobattle doesn't change the fact that you still have a stupid encounter rate and yes, it still takes time to battle)... talk about mind numbing!

No amount of argument can convince me that any fanbase is provably worse than another without bringing personal bias into it.

avatar being biased?  You jest!

You know, maybe they can ignore the amount of battles and possible loading times because the game just kicks ass on other parts. Heck, my first full playthrough of FF VI was with the Playstation-port, and we all know the loading times on that one, and I'm not one to be shy of doing re-equipping after towns.

But you're right about fanboys being annoying, they basically kept me playing Kingdom Hearts II because I loathe the fandom around it.

Also, worst and annoying fanboys are console/pc-fanboys. Especially when they start throwing the usual shit about why console Y is way better than PC,  etc.

And about this Sony's way of informing us, I kinda in between. Sure it probably is f---ing disgrace that they didn't inform in 24-48 hours why PSN is down, or having troubles. But then I kinda do dig the way of telling us when they themselves know better what's going on. I just hope that they get the f---ing idiots who did the hacking, especially if it's some idiotic protest because of whinygeohotz.

Should be interesting to see how Sony handles its E3 presser after all this.  Notice that Kevin Butler hasn't said a word since the outage -- all he's done is retweet a few messages from the official PlayStation twitter feed.

I have to say I'm pretty pissed about this. I just got Mortal Kombat and can't play it online. I didn't get a chance to download Arcana Heart yet and Blazblue just upgraded to Continuum Shift 2.

Bad time for fighting gamers all around.

I agree with XLord. I would really like to know where that VP of Everything is right now. I don't think even he could talk himself out of this goof up.