chimaera9

"The video game community at large doesn't have to clean up Sony's mess, but we owe it to ourselves and each other to ensure Sony does the job right. Otherwise, we risk continuing to be treated as uninvolved, adolescent basement-dwellers. The hackers among us shouldn't be the only ones to teach Sony a lesson." -Managing Editor, James Ransom-Wiley

We all have our opinions, but the views expressed by Joystiq's managing editor is deplorable. Do you, James, think of yourself so highly that you believe Sony owes you something personally, and present yourself here so self-righteously as to advise the rest of us to "teach Sony a lesson?" It's your opinion that Sony treats us as "adolescent basement-dwellers," an opinion I don't share--I have a lot of respect for a company that provides me with the best entertainment device I've purchased, provides solid customer support when I have problems with it, and provides continual free patches and services for the PS3 years after I bought it.

You seem to think that because Sony was successfully hacked, they were negligent in their efforts to keep our information secure. Hackers from other countries attack the most protected and secured (government) information in our country on a daily basis, with thousands of attacks every single day. There have been breaches, and the government is constantly trying to keep up with the hackers. Considering Sony has lasted this long before being breached is admirable, and I don't attribute the breach to them leaving the back door open or having shoddy protection measures--the hackers were just that good.

I don't know what you've been reading, but there is plenty of information on the internet about this breach to answer some of your questions. You said, "It would seem, then, that in order to prevent such a sorry (non) response from Sony, video game media and consumers alike will have to act and not just react."
This "sorry (non) response," as you put it, is obviously referring to the delay in Sony notifying us that our information was compromised. But if you read even a few reports on the internet on this incident, you'll see that Sony wasn't even certain how far the hackers had penetrated until early this week. What would you do, running a huge company with 77 million online subscribers--blow the whistle early and discover the breach was minimal, only to cause 77 million people to go through the process of canceling their credit cards, checking on our credit reports, and putting a fraud notice out...then realize it was all for nothing because the security that has held up for so long had actually prevented user data from being stolen? They wanted to be sure before releasing that info. Any other company would do the EXACT same thing before sounding the alarm.

Don't sit there and self-righteously condemn Sony and issue some kind of call to arms as if everyone should agree with your stance. I don't. Others don't either. Some will, and some will feel personally slighted, as if it's all about them. But this is no more about Sony being casual towards gamers than my bank being unconcerned about their customers when their ATM was secretly fitted with a skimming device. My bank had high security measures in place and they were still thwarted by clever thieves, but that doesn't mean that my bank was casually nonchalant about their security. We're all victims in this, Sony included, and the people you SHOULD be castigating are the hackers for messing with our lives.

I LIKE Sony and the services they provide. I LIKE using the PSN to download movies and games. And now I'm angry because Sony is going to suffer, and the suffering will be passed on to us, unintentionally. Now it is likely we'll have to go through more security to purchase things from the PSN. It is likely that all the cost to Sony will be passed on to us somehow for them to continue to even offer these services. And, if all these asinine lawsuits see the light of day, Sony could possibly suffer enough that there might not be a PSN or a PS4 someday.

Maybe, Mr. Managing Editor, you never liked Sony to begin with and this is fun for you to watch, which would make sense considering your obvious negative bias towards Sony in your write-up above. Sure, this is a blog and we're all free to have our own opinions. I certainly have mine, and mine is, you've failed at having any amount of impartiality or a shred of professionalism enough to bear the title of Managing Editor. You're just another product of the entitlement crowd, thinking everybody owes you something. Man up, and try to recognize where the blame should really fall. Because it's exactly your kind of thinking that the hackers justify their actions with--thinking you ought to "teach Sony a lesson."

It'll be $4.99.

http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/01/31/pac-man-championship-edition-hits-psp-and-ps3-tomorrow/#more-44376

@bigwhiteyeti
I totally agree--I was definitely frightened by the first couple Silent Hills, and I loved turning off all the lights and playing them alone late at night to see how much I could freak myself out. The screenshots for this one look great, and I'm looking forward to trying this out. Not showing everything, leaving a lot to the imagination, and using nuance are very, very effective tools to create fear. These guys know what they're doing with horror.

This is a very fun, addictive game, but I agree about the text size. I have a 60" HDTV and I was sitting 7 feet away and still had to squint to read the text. I'm glad they're fixing it.

Regardless, though, the game has tons of replay value and I found myself repeating a mission endlessly until I earned a gold badge. It's tons of fun and great with other players, too. Highly recommended.

Yeah, Greed Corp. is a brilliant strategy game. I managed to earn all but that last trophy, where you have to own a harvester every round and never let one be destroyed except by self-destruct, AND win against 3 other skilled AI players. Insanely hard.

I still play Greed a lot, it was well worth the price. I will definitely be checking Gatling Gears out when it releases. Awesome stuff.

@That Burning Sensation

I totally agree with you, but tell that to the investors out there in the stock market. Gamestop has been one of the top five performers and has done well during the recession, but the stupid investors are all totally paranoid about digital distribution and have no idea that we're at least a few years away from it ever being a threat to hard-copy game sales. It's really annoying--just go read some of the investor comments for GME, they have no clue what they're talking about.

@chimpsmith

Yeah, thanks for the tip--already did that a number of times, especially when the $20 cards were on sale at Target for $17. I bought up about $140 worth and they lasted me for several months on PSN. I hope they have that sale again.

I think it's a very good idea, for several reasons, some of which have already been mentioned but I'll repeat them:

1. Gamestop store credit from trade-in's can be used to buy digital content
2. Specific gifts
3. No need to use a credit card for purchase (for those that can't use them)
4. I'd prefer to have digital copies of games these days because they run faster (shorter load times) and they're more convenient (I don't have to pick which UMD's I'm going to carry around.)
5. It's about time Gamestop embraces digital sales. Now I can enjoy everything I like about Gamestop: pre-orders, midnight early-releases for some games, trade-in's, experienced gaming staff I can ask questions to about games I'm considering, affordable used games, and now I can buy digital content, too.

Oh, and no, I don't work for Gamestop, but I do have a lot of shares in their company. Hopefully the non-gaming investors out there will get over their fears about digital distribution being a problem for Gamestop with this news. It's a solid company and has performed well even during this recession.

I'm glad I can go buy the next two PSP games I wanted digitally now instead of piling up more slow, clunky UMD's. Oh yeah, and reason number 6. for me:

I can pay cash for digital content without my credit card bill indicating exactly how much I spend on games every month. For those of you that are married, you'll understand what I mean. ;)

Personally, I think the sentence was too light. He brought their site down for ELEVEN days? I can only imagine what kind of potential revenue loss Sony sustained for 11 days (I'd imagine they'd have ad services and such that were upset their ads weren't being seen for 11 days, and yet had paid to have them seen.) Oh, and don't someone write that Sony can afford it and whatever. Hackers shouldn't be taken lightly--they should be punished very severely. They make our lives more difficult because of all the extra internet security programs we have to deal with, pay for, and adapt to. They rip of identities, destroy computers, crash services we use, etc. Treat them as the criminals they are.

Definitely buying this! I hope they add motion control support later (when the Move releases), too--that would be awesome.