Sony chief says PSN outage was great for learning

The four-week long PSN outage was a "great experience," according to president of Sony Network Entertainment Tim Schaaff. The claim, made during an interview with VentureBeat on Wednesday at the MobileBeat conference, argued that the pressure of the breach made the PlayStation service stronger. Customers were also at least as interested as they were before.

"We're back online, everything's live again around the world, and the amazing thing through all of this is that the customers have all come back, and network performance is better than ever, sales are better than ever, and we've been very, very pleasantly surprised by the experience," Schaaff said.

The optimism came despite the outage taking 77 million PlayStation Network accounts offline for four weeks and another two weeks while the network was brought completely back. It cost Sony an estimated $171 million to address as well, both through the actual fixes as well as giveaways of free games, PlayStation Plus passes, and identity protection.

Schaaff then talked about how the changing nature of the world makes network security questionable. Sony found other sites were hit by hackers soon after its own, including government institutions and other large companies.

Schaaf was nonetheless clear that he hoped there wouldn't be a repeat given the blows to the company. "I would not like to do it again. One time was enough. Great learning experience," he admitted.

By Electronista Staff

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