Sony Releases PS3 3.61 Update Ahead of PSN's Imminent Return

Sonny Yatsen writes "Sony has released the PS3 3.61 firmware update as a part of the phased return of the Playstation Network and Qriocity. The new update now requires all PSN users to change their passwords in order to sign back into the PSN service." And several readers are pointing to reports that the network is slowly being spun up. Snips one anonymous submitter: "Sony Japan told customers today that it would begin phased restoration of its services of its beleaguered Playstation Network which has been suffering from an outage for nearly a month. The company would start bringing back its gaming network this Sunday, on a country-by-country basis, and expects it to be completed by May 31."

Comments

The problems go much deeper

[symbolset]

There are reports today that Sony's networks still are oblivious to real security. Among the serious vulnerabilities are links to globally viewable security consoles in robots.txt files, ID web-management consoles being publicly available and indexed in Google, and more!

I guess the upside is that if the hackers are going to get your credit card from Sony, they already have it so you may as well play your games too.

Re:The problems go much deeper

[Anonymous Coward]

Too late I think.

An outage like this one will cause more than a few to rethink why they spend so much time gaming online. Perhaps the issue may serve a higher purpose and get folks out doing something else.

I'm very curious to see how many will cancel their accounts with SOE after this, and of those, how many will be better off for it.

Re:The problems go much deeper

[pnewhook]

The upside for everyone else - Wii, Xbox, PC - is that they've been playing their games this entire time.

I've been playing my PS3 games for the entire outage without it affecting me in the slightest.

Re:The problems go much deeper

[ZombieBraintrust]

Ohh I don't think the attack had anything to do with OtherOS. My statement says nothing of the sort. Apparently, a lot of people believe that this attack was revenge for removing Linux. I believe Nintendo will not want to offer a feature that has such a large backlash if they remove it. Especially a feature their customers are not likely to use.

Re:The problems go much deeper

[shutdown -p now]

Perhaps the issue may serve a higher purpose and get folks out doing something else.

Yes, like playing D&D, which, of course, doesn't require any connection - only a steady supply of pizza! ~

Re:The problems go much deeper

[donscarletti]

I've been playing PS3 games this whole time, just not online. The same applies to my XBox since I refuse to buy Gold membership, but I will start playing on PSN again once it comes back.

I'm not going to apologize for Sony and say that they are not incompetent in online security, but this will not quell my interest in PS3 any more than Sony's other numerous blunders, because I still believe that PS3 is a great piece of consumer electronics. As a software guy, I have always known Sony are a bunch of guys who just do not understand software, take PS3's awful operating system into account, it just refuses to multitask between some combos of apps, like opening a webbrowser or playing music while you are browsing the store, it obviously has not implemented its file system correctly since you cannot copy directly from the network to a memory card or a thumb drive. I implemented a better operating system than these guys for my honours thesis and that was rubbish. But, a PS3 is just such a good piece of hardware, it supports so many different types of media and device, you can just plug a keyboard or mouse up to it, or use bluetooth and it will work as it should, stick in a blueray, dvd or cd and it will play it or fill that same disk with movie and sound files and it will play that too. HDMI port as well as digital audio and standard analogue at the back all works great with standard cable, SD, MS and CF at the front (now removed sadly but great if you have a first gen model). It's quiet, reliable and looks good. Also, it handles games pretty well too, kind of gets the rough end on ports because it does not make sense to develop a multi-platform game around the PS3's little quirks.

It comes down to it, PSN is kind of awful compared to XBox Live Gold, but it is free. Once again, Sony are bumbling idiots when it comes to software, but I've known that for years, no company that cared about software would even consider using the Cell processor since it is torture for programmers. But if I am buying new hardware, Sony obviously (in my mind) makes the very best and I will buy it. I just wish they outsourced their software to Europe or North America since Japanese have always had difficulty with large software projects.

Re:The problems go much deeper

[Maudib]

Great. Keep giving your money to these assholes.

The ethical thing to do is to boycot them. Rootkits, pulling otheros, suing customers, this stuff won't stop so long as there are sociopaths like yourself giving them money.

Re:The problems go much deeper

[anomaly256]

IBM fabricate the CELL for Sony. If IBM suffer because they don't sell the (otherwise) *very lucrative* BladeServers, cost of CELL goes up, Sony suffers. It's a pretty straight forward causal relationship... When you're in bed together, one person pissing the bed is pissing the bed for all persons

Why is the whole network linked to credit cards?

[whois]

Seems a big failure on design. If I designed a credit card payment system I would have it only be active in the portion of the network that required people to pay for something.

So... your playstation comes online and you want to sign in and play a game. Ok, the console has been authorized before it should be able to send a token saying "I'm whois let me play games."

In fact, PSN shouldn't really care who you are unless you're trying to buy something. Buying something and playing a game are two fundamentally different things. Your credit card should probably not be linked to the same username that you use for web browsing. There should be two accounts or two privilege levels that require different types of sign-on.

Why does the PSN network care who you are until you buy something? The entire store should still be online and all free downloads available, just no payed downloads until they fix that part. You should be able to play Black Ops without risking your financial future right?

You might say the customer wouldn't put up with the bullshit of having two accounts, or everyone will use the same password twice but:

1. If you explain how it works some people will do the right thing and be protected.
2. We've already put up with crazy amounts of bullshit, like weekly system updates that can't be backgrounded and take forever. Loss of features some people specifically payed for (ps2 compatibility, running Linux), and just a bad UI that can't do simple things like play your mp3 collection while you game or browse the store.

Re:Woo Hoo Go Sony

[lexsird]

Indeed, you don't miss it until you don't have it. That reminds me, I need to polish up my Mortal Combat moves .

Re:Why is the whole network linked to credit cards

[ZombieBraintrust]

You got to love arm chair systems architects. Every thing is easy peasy and obvious. Simple answer is:....

Management has no idea how things work. So they turn everything off at once during a breach. And turn everything back on in small steps with tons of testing along the way. It is a best practice as old as computing.

Re:At least it happened to Sony

[kylemonger]

There are no innocents, only those who are apathetic. If you're still putting money into Sony's pockets after the crap they've pulled then you are part of the problem and deserve to suffer along with Sony.

Re:At least it happened to Sony

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I am not in favor of the innocent users becoming victims, but if this happened to any company, at least it happened to Sony. There are few companies that deserve this more than Sony.

It's not even really a case of 'deserving' it. They created ill-will with a group of people, and those people retaliated. In the short term, a lot of people are getting burned by the outage. Looking at the big picture, however, Sony will have to think long and hard about whether or not to remove features in the future.

What the 'hackers' did was criminal and not justifiable. They should not have done this. (I bet somebody replies without having read this bit.) But if Sony shows any wisdom at all, they'll learn from it.

Re:At least it happened to Sony

[PRMan]

Harsh, but somewhat deserved. The problem is that the mass media barely covers this stuff and the average person has no idea.

Re:Why is the whole network linked to credit cards

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

In fact, PSN shouldn't really care who you are unless you're trying to buy something.

Or unlocking Trophies, or listening if you're receiving messages from other players, or setting the status of what game you're playing, or to check whether or not you've got game invites periodically...

Oh, wait...

SOE games restored today

[kfsone]

Sony's SOE games (the MMOs, such as EverQuest) have been down for 2 weeks. They brought them back online earlier today.

Activating it per state

[saikou]

What I'm curious about is why do they re-activate the network per state.
As of right now, just California and a few New England states seem to be "online". One server per state? Sounds a bit odd.
Oh and the map is stored on Flickr. For a moment there I thought someone hacked their blog system too, and just posted faked-up "we're about to go live again" message.

Re:Activating it per state

[guttentag]

According to the map there's a giant storm front of jumbled X, O, SQUARE and TRIANGLE symbols headed for Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. That may explain why those states are still offline while California, which should only just get grazed near San Diego, is already up and running. Not sure why Alaska's offline, since the map clearly shows the storm passing far to the north of Barrrow...

Re:Why is the whole network linked to credit cards

[AdamHaun]

Has it actually been confirmed (by Visa, Mastercard, or Sony) that credit card numbers were stolen? Not just anecdotes -- we'd expect a few of the millions of PSN customers to be victims of ID theft anyway.

Generalizing..

[headkase]

So, the PSN cloud failed for a month. It has made me rethink my enthusiasm for Google's ChromeOS. With my fat-desktop I can still do useful things with it without a network. With ChromeOS I'm not sure I can do anything if the network is disrupted. And initially, I was like: "Awesome! Want!" when Google announce ChromeOS..

Re:Generalizing..

[gtch]

Much of the point of ChromeOS is that applications will have offline functionality.

The HTML5 technologies that ChromeOS will use for offline functionality are really designed to synchronise with the original server. So when Google Docs or your network goes down, you will be able to keep working on your document. But if you want to take your document somewhere else — say take a copy home as a file on a USB stick — you can't. Exporting documents is done in the cloud, not by the browser, so your document is stuck on your machine. You just have to wait until Google Docs works again so it can sync back up and then export it.

That is almost exactly the same as the PS3 outage. The PS3 console and games continue to work as normal offline, but you can't play online and you can't switch to a competing provider of online games. In a major outage of Google Docs, your ChromeOS would continue to work as normal offline, but you wouldn't be able to take the document anywhere or give it to someone else — and you wouldn't be able to switch to a competing provider like Office Live — because your data is stuck in the Google cloud. One day Google may fix this, but at the moment you would be stuck.

The problem here is being reliant on one company. On a desktop computer with a full operating system you've got myriad alternatives and competing solutions for any problem. On the PS3 and ChromeOS you've got a very simple-to-use system that's normally all you need; but if it fails then you're stuck with no alternative.

Re:Generalizing..

[drinkypoo]

Much of the point of ChromeOS is that applications will have offline functionality.

The HTML5 technologies that ChromeOS will use for offline functionality are really designed to synchronise with the original server.

That's not true, Google is adding additional functionality to handle local file access. Again, don't let the facts get in your way or anything.

Re:At least it happened to Sony

[westlake]

There are no innocents, only those who are apathetic. If you're still putting money into Sony's pockets after the crap they've pulled then you are part of the problem and deserve to suffer along with Sony.

Among the 70 million PSN account holders there are, I would imagine, quite a few in a mood to rake the geek and the hacker over the coals.

Far from apathetic.

But simply sharing a different set of values and priorities.