Sony Apologises for PSN Outage, Unveils PSN 2.0 and Offers Compensation

Judging by the deepness of the bows at Sony's press conference earlier today (and bows mean a great deal in Japanese culture) Sony has admitted just how badly it screwed up with the PSN hack. But, the company is now focused on recovery from the its problems and reckons that things should be back up and running in this week.

First up are offers of free PS+ (which is a pretty poor offer if you've only got a PSP) and Qriocity services for a month for all customers, by way of apology for the outage. Existing subscribers will get an extra month. Additional goodies will be offered up by way of apology once things get back up and running.

However, the PSN Store won't be back up until later in the month. When these services do come back online, extra background security will be in place, although all the user will see is a new password request and all of those who've cancelled their transaction card (including me) will, naturally, have to re-enter their details.

Some credit card thefts have been reported, although remain unconfirmed as being a direct result of the hack. There will be a replay of the press conference at this link soon. There is a live blog version over on Engadget.

Sony will also be thanking its lucky stars that most of the big PSP games in Japan are ad hoc - like Monster Hunter and Phantasy Star - if they had been tied into PSN there would have been riots in the streets, or at least lots of tutting! Something to think about when developing for NGP, which Sony mentioned as not being affected by the hack.