Sony reveals PlayStation Network recent outage to cost around $171.2 million
Sony has finally revealed the estimated figure the recent attacks on its servers cost the corporation to be around $171.2 million. A group of hackers breached Sony security measures and reportedly stole its users’ personal as well as credit card data that
forced Sony to shut down the PlayStation Network (PSN).
Howard Stringer, the president and CEO of Sony Corporation, earlier revealed that the corporation did not have any estimate of the damage caused but did confess that it would be significantly high.
An official statement by Sony revealed, "Based on information currently available to Sony, our current known costs associated with the unauthorised network access are estimated to be approximately 14 billion yen in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2012”.
It seems Stringer was bracing the public and its investors as the value equates to around 14 billion yen or around £106.1m in losses for the multinational consumer electronics giant.
The attacks took place around mid-April. The first was reported to have affected 77 million users while the second attack, soon after the first, affected another 25 million users, taking the total number of users whose data had been compromised to over 100
million.
There was more woe for Sony on the financial front as Sony’s initial profit and loss forecast for the 2011 financial year had it at a 70 billion Yen profit, which after the attack has fallen to an alarming 260 billion Yen net loss.
Sony shut down the PSN when it was made aware of the attacks that had taken place and promptly outsourced the investigation of the scope and nature of the breach, while at the same time, attempting to make the PSN and its servers more secure for its re-launch.
The entire saga embarrassed the corporation immensely as the senior executives of the company bowed down in a press conference, expressing their apologies to the public on two separate occasions, namely the first and second attacks.
In the United Kingdom, the amount of PlayStation 3 consoles that were exchanged for either cash or its rival console, the Xbox 360, went up to 200% as users seemed to have lost faith in the Sony console and its security measures.
However, Sony moved to entice those who defected back as well as reward the faith of the loyal fans with a ‘Welcome Back’ package that offered two free games and a host of other special features for users.
Sony will be present at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo in June where more details are expected to be revealed to the public along with Sony’s plan to recover from these incidents.
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