Microsoft Corp’s Xbox Live and Sony Corp’s PlayStation Network, Internet services that video gamers use to play online, were hit by connection failures on Christmas Day, with the hackers Lizard Squad claiming responsibility.
That would really piss me off.
Although the PSN is up, email verification is down. Unfortunately, if it’s required it’s required. There’s no getting past it. So I’m still stuck.
I mind the downtime a lot less than having to type my password in every time I’m told it’s up only to find it’s still broken somehow.
What’s the point of attacks like this, apart from bragging rights?
I was wondering the same thing. Some conclusions I came to were possible Sony rivals trying to cause damage to the company via internal strife and chaos, people trying to drive Sony stock down, or as you said, security crackers trying to claim bragging rights.
Sony’s rivals? The ones in North (best) Korea?
Do the consoles work when the PSN is down?
Was there not some outcry when some idiot (VP) at Microsoft was going to require the XBone to be connected 24/7?
At least on the PlayStation, the console itself works and most games work.
Of course, if you just bought a console and it comes with a game code instead of a game disc you’re probably not going to be able to redeem it in the store. And you won’t necessarily get any bug fixes to the disc game, depending on how much is down.
We bought a console that came with two games, and I bought another game as well. One of the games was a disc and worked fine, albeit an older version. Another game wouldn’t start without PSN. The third game was a download code, so we couldn’t download it. 1/3.
But if it went down now, we’d have 2/3 running. 3/4, counting Minecraft (which was a $5 upgrade in the store for PS3 Minecraft users).
Got a PS4 for Christmas (or to be more accurate, bought it for myself using Christmas as an excuse). Digital downloads are a huge pain when the network is down. The console came with a game and some PSN credit that I used to get a big discount on another, so I figured I would try it, but I am really not very impressed.
Even when things are working as intended, it seems that they can take days to download completely. I’m not sure if the download speeds are so terrible because of this attack, but it takes the better part of a day just to download the initial part that lets you play the first level of a game. I have no intention of ever buying a digital game at full price, since you’re paying more for a markedly inferior product — Amazon might be able to deliver a physical disk before the entire game is downloaded, at least on my network, and you can’t even sell the game if you want after you’re done.
The system is pretty impressive graphically, though.