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. 

Shouldn't of ever touched Geohot lol

I think it was just time that hack happened. The Geohot debacle only hasten it.

The moment the PS3 was cracked wide open and the security and lack there of making the PSN hack a sure thing to happen.

Since Sony has many networks. If one shown a lack of security, the hackers would naturally snoop into anything Sony.

True, but if Anon is under the major attacks, doubt they would of went after Sony if Sony didn't piss them off with the Geohot debacle. 

Yeah, and the real hacking team wouldn't be able to use the Anon attacks as cover. Assuming that other team is real. I still believe Anon didn't do it other than the failed attempt to DDOS Sony that so many celebrated here.

Eh. Still playing my PS3 every day and loving it. As long as these hackers don't break into my home and physically take my PS3 away from me, I think I'll be just fine. 

You could argue that Sony simply has a belligerent attitude. I am not buying into this portrayal of Sony as a helpless victim. Sony likes to use lawyers to bully people into giving them what they want. People who could never afford a lawyer of their own let alone a team like Sony has at its disposal. In this case Sony decided to lay down a public beating on another small guy. The difference this time is that small guy had a lot of friends who decided to gang up on Sony, and beat Sony down in public where the world could watch.

I honestly have no empathy for Sony. Those who live by the sword die by the sword. Karma is a bitch. What goes around comes around. In my opinion the hackers are no better or worse then Sony. They both fight dirty. They don't care about the body count. They both like to escalate, and they both have no remorse. Congratulations are in order for Sony they found an adversary that could be just as despicable as they are. Maybe going a few more rounds with these guys will get Sony to straighten up its act.

The way Sony acts probably made this inevitable, and I do feel some empathy for the bystanders that have gotten caught up in all of this. I won't call anybody here innocent however. We all read the same comments out of Sony over the past five years. We all know they behaved badly, and if you get tangled up with someone that behaves badly you can't exactly cry fowl when you take a shot that was aimed at them.

It's interesting to see PS3 sales still going so well, not counting all the sales and incentives going on to keep the fan base. Nothing this gen, not even Nintendo's brandname this gen comes anywhere near the power that the name Sony held in the last two generations. The fact that the PS3 has seen such rough times this gen and (though I'm not implying Sony has sold the PS3 on the Playstation name alone) still garnered such good sales numbers is a testament to the power of the Playstation brand.

It'd be interesting to see just what it would take to hurt their brand name so significantly if even one of the largest confidential information drops in history is't enough. Not that I want it, it;d just be an interesting study.

people forget negatives quite quickly - for example the rrod is hardly mentioned anymore, and it was one of the larest catastrophes the industry has seen.

you also need to remember that while nearly all ps3 consumers will have known about the large psn incident; they won't all know about these numerous smaller hacks. in their minds, sony is already on top of this situation.

if sony didn't go to court with geohotz, then the would have faced pretty substantial pircay in the healthiest financial times their console has seen. 

people will be wary for quite a while using sony's online services giving anything confidential, but as long as sony keeps churning out quality shiny black products, their brand won't be damaged too much.

i certainly doubt this will cost them in the billions. 

I certainly do not feel sorry for them. They're just getting a taste of their own medicine...