Activision hopeful PSN will be restored before Black Ops Escalation release
The recent outage of Sony’s online social and gaming platform, the PlayStation Network (PSN) may end up costing the company more than expected as developers such as Activistion are growing increasingly anxious.
Activision, one of the largest publisher’s in the videogame industry, has expressed their concern over whether or not the PSN would be back up and operational in time for the launch of the latest Black Ops DLC (Downloadable Content Pack).
Known globally as the company behind the hugely successful Call of Duty franchise, Eric Hirshberg, Activison’s Publishing CEO, stated that they were hopeful the PSN issue would be sorted ‘as soon as possible’, or to be more specific before the end of the
quarter when the DLC is scheduled to be available for download on the platform.
Hirshberg said at a press conference, "We're planning on launching the Call of Duty Escalation content pack for the PS3 later in the quarter and I'm hopeful that this situation will be resolved by then."
Whereas Activision’s Chief Financial Officer, Thomas Tippl, explained how it could ultimately cost Activision the “high-margin revenue” that they could have earned if the PSN had not been shutdown.
The Call of Duty series is one of the most played online games across all platforms with over a million users logging in everyday across all platforms, with the DLC’s carrying with them the chance for publishers to add to their earnings. The PSN outage could
cost Sony as well as Activision if it is not back up by the time the Escalation Map Pack is released.
Things only seem to be getting worse for Sony in terms of developer support as Dylan Cuthbert, founder of Q games, famous for the well known PixelJunk franchise, went on record and voiced his concern on Sony being able to keep the support of video game developers.
"I have no idea yet what Sony are going to do to help developers such as ourselves but I have a feeling they are thinking about doing something or they will lose developers which of course is pretty bad for them," said Cuthbert.
The loss of developers would hurt Sony immensely as the battle for games exclusive to specific consoles usually define which is the more successful in a tight and extremely competitive market.
The PSN was shut down over three weeks ago and no specific date for it to be restored has been stated as yet, with the 31st May date now being met with contradicting statements of ‘a few days’.
Sony have hired third party investigators to look into the matter, while it looks to make the PSN more secure before putting it back online leaving developers, publishers and gamers alike in a state of anxiety.
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