Since April 20th the PSN service has been for all attentive purposes out of commission. Even with assurances from Sony that some services would be at least partially operational by now do not appear to pan out with millions of Playstation 3 users still not able to login and use the Playstation Network. More troubling, Bloomberg news reported it may be down for quite some time.
Sony Spokesperson Shigenori Yoshida was quoted in the Bloomberg report saying, “Sony is uncertain when it can resume the services.” If this had been all she said, it would have been no different than what we’ve been hearing all along from Sony. More conjecture, no firm dates for return, and what appears to be more stall tactics. But all that changed with her next statement. She went to say, “The company is in the process of adopting an improved security system and its plan to restart the services fully by May 31 is unchanged.”
It does appear Sony is working on getting the system back up and running and that May 31st is the date to watch for a full return of the Playstation Network. With news today on the Playstation Blog that the PSN service is in it’s “final stages of internal testing” this date may actually pan out to be the date of return. Of course after a massive intrusion like the one that caused the PSN outage in the first place Sony has to make sure that when they do come back the system is secure and safe for customers. Otherwise the damage to the system may extend to Sony’s reputation itself.
Let’s hope this is it folks and the system will back up as good as new on May 31st.
