http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-09/sony-s-playstation-qriocity-services-remain-shut-uncertain-on-restart.html

Sony Corp. (6758)’s PlayStation Network and Qriocity online services remain shut as of today, Shigenori Yoshida, a Tokyo-based spokesman said. Sony is uncertain when it can resume the services, Yoshida said by phone today.

The company is in the process of adopting an improved security system and its plan to restart the services fully by May 31 is unchanged, he said. Sony shut down the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services April 20 because of possible data theft by hackers.

The maker of PS consoles had planned to restart partial operations within a week after boosting the level of security system, the company said May 1.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mariko Yasu in 東京 at myasu@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Anand Krishnamoorthy at anandk@bloomberg.net

Are you kidding me, they said May 02, what the hell happened - they should let you play online and forget the store and Lovefilm, etc stuff like that until they get it up and running.

not because i need to play online - but because this is very bad for the consumers who only play online games!

I would have gotten  MK for 360 if I knew this ahead of time.

I want another 7 second, bowing apology and 2 more free games for this.

Some people say that this was already the original plan, to only restart it "fully" by the end of the month.

So maybe nothing has changed, except that they no longer have a date for the "partial" restart, whatever that means.

they always said they want to restart "some" features earlier with the store following later in the month.

i suppose "some" would cover basic online playability.

God damn they better put in cross game chat and some other new service if they take that much time.

This must feel like PSN Forever to a lot of people.

If they're really concerned about the data theft it's better they make sure it's not happening again. People whine all they want but the top priority here is not to allow gamers to play online but to make sure the system is secure. Losing a bit of sales is nothing compared to lawsuits because you lost customers info.

They surely are... The PSN outage might be remembered for some time, but nothing compared to what would happen if they got hacked again anytime soon...

Hackers know that, Sony knows that, so they'll do their utmost to have a secure system even if it takes one more month.

It's also quite possible that the hacker(s) left backdoors in the systems to make later hacking easier. They have to audit all the servers to clean that up.

Ouch this isn't good. There are a lot of gamers who will be angsting right now. It'll be interesting to see if this effects the sales in the near future and what long term consequences this has for Sony.