A Look Back At My Predictions On the PSN Outage

Just before Sony finally decided to inform us all that hackers had swiped all of our personal information, I posted this article with my musings on what may have happened.  Let's see how well I did:

Anonymous Succeeded In "Making Information Free" - WRONG

Though Sony did recently implicate Anonymous in the PSN hack, they've only said at this point that user information was stolen.  They have yet to say that there has been anything further than that, so I fail here.


Hackers Have Crippled the PSN, Sony Themselves Can't Get It Working Again - WRONG

As with the above, Sony hasn't said that any damage was done to their systems, they were just compromised.  I surmise the downtime shows us to what extent their system was broken by design, as they're running out of time to hit their promise of having some semblance of service up this week.

User Accounts Have Been Compromised - ABSOLUTELY CORRECT!

Sometimes I hate being right.  This is one of those times.  What else is there to say about this that hasn't already been said?  Be vigilant, keep a close eye on your credit/debit card statements, and pay very close attention to your credit report.

Sony's Intrusion Detection Alerted Them To An Issue, But They're Still Investigating If Any Damage Actually Occurred - CORRECT!

In their statement of what occurred, they were quoted as saying they:

• Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a full and complete investigation into what happened
• By April 25, forensic teams were able to confirm the scope of the personal data they believed had been taken, and could not rule out whether credit card information had been accessed. On April 26, we notified customers of those facts.

I claim this one as a win!

Sony PR Has No Way to Spin This Positively, Kevin Butler Is Firing People At Will - CORRECT!


In the aftermath, Sony is still bumbling about in trying to appease the userbase that has been wronged.  Their offer of a free month of Playstation Plus to all users is just comical in the fact that they've managed to offend their entire userbase all at once.

• Non Playstation Plus subscribers are basically being baited into becoming paying Playstation Plus subscribers.  Once they download all that free goodness available to them by being a Plus subscriber and then see 30 days later that they can no longer play that content, they either have to pony up the coin (SONY WIN!) or they just feel ripped off as they didn't truly get any apology at all from Sony.
• Playstation Plus subscribers on the other hand have to wonder why even though they're paying subscribers of the service, their "Welcome Back" is no different than the people that pay nothing.  I'm not saying that the PSN should become a pay service, but from a PR standpoint you HAVE to do something more for the users that are voluntarily paying for extra service.  These are your PREMIUM subscribers, and the fact that you've shown them no extra care is outright baffling.

Sony PR has failed at PR 101.  Communicate with the people in a timely fashion and don't patronize them.  If I were brought in at Sony in a position of power, that entire PR department would be fired.

Well, I hit on three of five, and honestly the first two were my "wild conspiracy theories that in some world had a remote chance of happening".  Maybe I should be a professional industry analyst :-)