SOE - No Breaks for You

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Man, Sony cannot seem to catch a break.  Sure you know that the PSN was broken into user information was stolen.  Sure you know that you may have lost your credit card that was used to buy games on the PSN to hackers.  But did you know that the same thing happened to all of the Sony Online Entertainment services?  This includes games such as Everquest 2, Free Realms, DC Online, and Clone Wars Adventures.  They found out May 2 (in Tokyo time) that the information was stolen around April 16th while doing a security audit in response to the PSN outage. And if you are out of the country things can be worse.  In addition to:

  • name
  • address
  • e-mail address
  • birthdate
  • gender
  • phone number
  • login name
  • hashed password

10,700 users in Austria, Germany, Netherlands and Spain may have had their dreict debt accounts breached.  This would give the hacker access to:

  • bank account number
  • customer name
  • account name
  • customer address

Not a good week for Sony.  So now SOE is down in addition to PSN (which should be up later this week) is down.  Sony is working on a "make good" plan for its users and at a local level will work with their users to get them in identify theft programs.  Hit the link for the full press release and check then check with your bank to make sure you don't have any unwanted charges on your accounts.

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Mario + Portal

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So I am sure that there is some actual news at there that I could report on.  I could mock the PSN some more, maybe further speculation on Project Cafe, or even randomly speculate on Microsoft's next console.  But that is not what I am going to do on todays post.  I have not gotten around to posting (or writing) my Portal 2 review, but I did find these portal related videos.  Do they give me some leway on the review until I can play the co-op portion?

PORTAL KOMBAT

Mario Meets Portal 2

Mortal Kombat Review - PS3

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Mortal Kombat is not rated ‘M’ for “Mature”, it’s rated ‘M’ for “Mother F*ck That Looked Like It Hurt A Lot!” Fighting fans rejoice, there is a new game that you can add to your collection and if you’re a Mortal Kombat fan, well, that's just icing on the cake. Mortal Kombat is one of the best fighting games I have ever played and for all of us that enjoyed the old school Mortal Kombat of yesteryears; you will be giddy with delight.
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PSN Breached

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So it has been made officially official that any PII that the PSN may have been keeping for you has been breached.  Ok, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but seeing how it has been down since what, Wednesday of last week, can you blame me?  And now they have come out to say how big the breach actually was.  Sony has engaged a private security firm to examine what they might have been taken in the attack and it was a decent amount of information:

  • Name
  • Address (City, State and ZIP)
  • Country
  • Email Address
  • Birth Date
  • Playstation / Qriocity Login
  • Playstation / Qriocity Password
  • PSN Handle / Online ID

On top of that profile data such as purchase history, billing address, and security answers could have been taken as well.  And while they have no proof that credit card numbers and expiration dates have been collected they are still advising people to check their credit reports if they kept that information on their PSN account.

So what does this mean for PSN? It is getting a strip down and rebuild.  Sony has decided instead of just patching the hole and risking something of this magnitude happening again that they are going to rebuild the system to have stronger security from the ground up.  Unfortunately this means that we are going to be out of the PSN and Qriocity services a bit longer (read: a long time).

Nintendo Announces an Announcement

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So you have heard words that Nintendo is getting ready to BLOW OUR MINDS (or at least make the attempt) with a new console.  You have heard whispers on the wind that it is supposed to come in 2012. Nintendo, not one to disappoint, has sent out a press release stating that very thing.  This year at E3 we will being seeing not only the new console, but it is supposed to be playable! I am looking forward to seeing this awesome (so my inner child wants to believe) system in all it's glory this June, but in the mean time, SPECULATION!

Is this the basis of the new system? I really have no clue.

We have seen rumors that it may have HDMI output (it better).  Other gossip says that mixed in with the expected motion controls (you know they are going to be there) is a controller with a touch screen.  Can you imagine that means the controllers may then cost somewhere between $75.00 - $100.00 (pure speculation).  Thats means that if the system costs us $300.00 (again a guess) we can expect to be dropping $570.00 (plus tax) for a console, 3 extra controllers and 1 game.  And we will do so happily, and then ask for more from Microsoft and Sony. So here is to giving up my pocket book next year so that I may continue to have the world's newest gaming consoles.

PSP Go No More

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Ah PSP Go, I don't own you and now I will never own you. Sony has completed their last production run of the shrunken hand held. Released on October 1, 2009 the system did not even get a full 2 years to try and impress us. Can you blame them either? The system had a quick price drop and if you had a collection of PSP games before hand you were not guaranteed to be able to play them, making you buy them all again. Now don't go fretting that you have to wait until the NGP to get your PSP one (which if you don't have one by now I see no purpose in not waiting).  The PSP 3000 is going to continue getting support at least until the NGP comes out, whenever that may be.

The Cake Is A Lie...

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Wow, what a Tuesday the 19th is going to be.  I'll be honest, I haven't played a brand new game on release day in who knows how long, Cataclysm probably.  But tomorrow is going to be an awesome day for gamers.  As you already know from my previous post, I'm super pumped for Mortal Kombat, but also equally excited for Portal 2.  Speaking of, it looks like it has been released on Steam, so I'm going to have to end the post quicker than I thought.  Portal 2 here I come!  Damn having to wake up early tomorrow for work, why can't I be independently wealthy!