Sony CEO, Howard Stringer, has made a short speech at the IFA Electronics Show in Berlin, talking about recent events including the PSN Hacking back in April. Stringer announced that the “PSN is more secure and better than ever”, having more than “3 million new customers since the network came back online.”
PlayStation Network is offline for scheduled maintenance from 16:05 on Thursday 11 August 2011 until 02:00 on Friday 12 August 2011, BST. During the maintenance period, you won’t be able to connect to the PlayStation Network, however, if you sign-in before, you can continue to play online.
Sony have started a new promotion on the PlayStation Network: PLAY. PLAY is a brand-new annual program, where you can get the season’s hottest PlayStation Network action titles. With every purchase of a PLAY title in PlayStation Store throughout the duration of the program (which ends on 20 September 2011), you’ll receive a separate piece of DLC for each game, plus a new theme with every pre-order.
Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood will finally be available for digital download over the PlayStation Network Network on August 3rd, 2011 for €29.99/ £23.99. In addition to the game, Sony will also be releasing a set of 10 avatars at a price of €0.49/ £0.40 each. Two of these avatars, Ezio and the Harlequin, will be exclusive to PlayStation Plus users and come free with purchase of ACB HDD.
The PlayStation Network has several successful exclusives, including Joe Danger, Critter Crunch, Flower and the PixelJunk series. Sony want to continue this success by investing a further $20 million dollars over the next three years to develop more exclusive titles.
Whilst the PlayStation Network is up and running across the rest of the world, the network is still down in Sony’s home country: Japan. Sony issued their first statement on the issue for two weeks late last week, saying that more time is needed to “make adjustments with the various related parties” but didn’t give a timescale on when this will all be resolved.
The PlayStation Store and complete PSN is now back online. And if you’ve missed it, the Welcome Back Program is now available to redeem via the Store. The Welcome Back program to thank you for your loyalty, and below, we’ve got what you need in order to get access to the included content. So, here’s a list of questions about the program.
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Now that the PlayStation Store is online, details about the European Welcome Back package has been revealed. Existing PlayStation Plus members will get an extra 70 days of membership to compensate for the downtime, while regular PSN users will be able to use PlayStation Plus for free for 30 days.
PlayStation Network and Qriocity account holders in the United States can begin the enrollment process for the identity theft protection program by visiting http://us.playstation.com/news/consumeralerts/identity-theft-protection/. The European equivalent will be available soon.
Last week, Sony revealed that it will be offering PSN customers free identity theft protection plans following the malicious attack on PlayStation Network throughout the region. Sony have finalised the details for current PlayStation Network and Qriocity consumers in UK, France, Spain, Italy and Germany, of which the details can be found below.
