PSN Outage Continues

Fifteen days have now passed since Sony took the PlayStation Network offline. Last Sunday, Sony issued a press release indicating that some PSN and Qriocity services would be back online this week. Yet, here we are four days later, with no PSN, no Qriocity, and no new news from Sony.

That is not to say that there have been no developments in the PSN story. One day after providing written answers to questions posed by Congress, in which Sony referenced hacker group Anonymous, Anonymous has stepped forward to once again to deny responsibility. In a press release, the group notes that they have "never been known to engage in credit card theft."

Click below for the full text of the press release.

Obviously, credit card information is enormously sensitive, and though Sony has responded to credit card concerns, many users remain on edge. Some PSN users who continue to attribute the outage to an attack by Anonymous -- which, again, has not been proven -- have apparently begun taking their unhappiness online. According to Gregg Housh, an activist Gawker states is associated with Anonymous, "All the Sony kids were flooding the [Anonymous chat servers] and whining and complaining."

Meanwhile, Sony's own forums are crowded with gamers wondering when PSN will finally be back. In response to just such a querry, Sony Community Team Leader Musterbuster gave all the update he could:

"I would love to be able to give you new information, and right now there isn't any available."

"I'm asking lots of questions but at the moment all I'm being told is that the "last update still stands" eg - Some PlayStation Network services will be restored this week."

"The very second I hear anything new, it will be passed on to you. I'm also keeping a note of your feedback throughout this outage, so keep posting it."

With rumors of a massive update coming to PSN, along with confirmed word of PS3 firmware update 3.61, not to mention the sheer lack of online gaming for the past two weeks, it's understandable that PlayStation 3 owners are beginning to run short on patience. No doubt that's why many of them are considering switching to Xbox 360.

As of right now, there are two days left for Sony to make good on getting some features of PSN and Qriocity up and running before the week ends. Do you think they'll make it?

Update: Just as this article was about to be published, the following appeared on the PlayStation Blog.

"Today our global network and security teams at Sony Network Entertainment and Sony Computer Entertainment began the final stages of internal testing of the new system, an important step towards restoring PlayStation Network and Qriocity services."

It's not back, but it's getting closer.

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Source: Gawker, PlayStation Forums [via CVG], CVG, PlayStation Blog