A breath of honesty is needed. During the past month there hasn't been a lot of exageration or misinformation. The news was universally bad for Sony. They suffered a public relations disaster, had to rebuild their information infrastructure, and are probably going to lose billions of dollars in reinbursement. Anyone thinking that Sony weathered the storm well, or is going to just bounce back is deluding themselves. There are still people harshing on Microsoft for the 360 failure rate years later, and Sony is going to be viewed as having shitty security on their consoles for just as long. Really bad timing on top of it all. The stigma will carry over to their next console.
The truth is that right now any successful hack of a Sony service is by default a serious matter. The consequence is simply compounded by prior failures. In the absense of the one hundred million hack this would be hardly worth noting. With that in the room however every hack will seem much worse then it may be. However it could be seen as a greater failure then the first. Simply due to the fact that Sony knows they are coming, but appears impotent to stop them. No matter how marginal the failure it is probably being given the same weight by the layman. They probably will not tell themselves that the first hack was a thousand times worse then the second, third, or sixth. They will simply give every hack the exact same weight.
Personal data might not have been lost, but public trust takes a huge hit every time one of these stories comes up, and it isn't a matter of piling on even though some here might feel that way. Sony is at war with a legion of hackers at this moment, and it reads like Sony is losing the war. Sony has yet to score one actual victory. All that Sony has done is eat one loss after another. This is becoming a matter of inertia. Every added sin makes in harder for Sony to reverse the coarse.
That in the context of this forum is not good for the console. Lets be honest sales and support are really a measure of faith in the company and its products. Yes it certainly seems academic, but lets be clear about one thing what you get is proportional to the faith. Sony is drawing right now on the size of its platform, and banked goodwill. Those however are not immutable. They are finite, and consumable. These continuing attacks are consuming the faith. The longer that they go on the worst the effects will become.
