Weekly Poll #2: The Results

This week’s poll question was anchored around the controversy of the Sony hack and the subsequent PSN month long flop, and now all the votes have been cast and the results are in. Hopefully more of you noticed the little box on the right this week, as the more people who participate the more representative the results will be.

Anyho, the question itself was as follows: “Following the recent attack on the Playstation Network, how do you feel about the way Sony is dealing with it?”

A highly topical and touchy subject in the gaming world at the moment, particularly for PS3 owners. We gave you two options to choose from and this is what you said:

40.54% said they don’t blame Sony for what happened and feel comfortable that the company have fortified their security systems to protect their customers sufficiently – supporting Sony and holding no grudge.

59.46% expressed concern and frustration that the system was hacked so deeply, and at how long the PSN and related services took to come back online – the welcome back package is a cheap treat to superficially win gamers trust back and users feel angry.

So interestingly and probably unsurprisingly, just over half of you feel the wound will take more than a goody bag of free stuff and a promise it won’t happen again, to heal properly. The problem Sony now has is that other services and websites are suddenly being targeted by online hackers, creating an almost never ending to-do list of stuff they have to fix ASAP. Obviously we knew the network crash was going to affect Sony’s reputation in some way, but the issue of trust has really risen to the top of the argument.

We have to be truthful and blunt about this; millions of PS3 users all across the world had personal information simultaneously and rapidly exposed, potentially to devastating effect courtesy of the information Sony requested we supply to them. Whether or not Sony could have been prepared for the attack or not is irrelevant, because Sony are now a clear target for hacking groups, and consumers have every right to be wary of associating their gaming transactions with them. Now that Sony’s system has been kitted up and strengthened massively, perhaps we can be less worried about future attacks, but what can we say about other platforms?

Are Microsoft and Nintendo hastily hammering planks of wood across their firewalls and such to ensure they don’t suffer from similar crippling blow? I suppose it doesn’t bode well for Sony that the day they finally re-launched the PS Store and all it’s free content, the whole thing is still lagging like crazy and is sparking with error messages and failed connections.

Another interesting thing to consider is that analysts and sales companies were reporting that before the PSN hack, Sony’s PS3 had finally overtaken the Xbox 360 install base and was now boasting more customers than Microsoft overall. Despite this though, the majority of game sales of new releases still are for the 360, so read into that what you will.

Assuming everything continues to settle down for Sony, it seems our readers will only very cautiously begin to respect Sony, and slowly rebuild faith in them as the year goes on. Will the repercussions of the hack be felt in the success of InFamous 2, Resistance 3, and Uncharted 3?

Once again thank you all for participating, and please take part in the next poll discussion.