RAGEFACE: PSN outage - day 6

Well, PSN is still down.

I'm guessing there will be no PS Store update or new content for PSN+ members this week. But hey - Sony announced two PlayStation tablets!

Following hot on the heels of the first PlayStation Phone, Sony has today unveiled its first tablet devices that will be capable of (officially) playing PlayStation games.

The S1 tablet, which is a Tegra-powered device and is tapered on one end "like holding a magazine", will be the first Sony tablet device to carry the "PlayStation Certified" label, meaning it can play both PS1 games and other Sony-approved titles specifically for mobile platforms. It has a 9-inch screen.

In addition to the first PlayStation tablet device, the S1, Sony has today also unveiled a second, the S2, a tablet that can fold into a DS-like clamshell.

Meh. I've still yet to be enticed by this whole tablet computing thing - so let's just move on to something else...

This was posted over at Reddit by an admin from psx-scene regarding the PSN downtime:

Ok, I've seen a bunch of speculation of why people think PSN is down, and I thought I should just post what the community knows in comparison to what Sony is telling everyone. The truth is, there was a new CFW (custom firmware) released known as Rebug (http://rebug.me). It essentially turns a retail console into a dev console (not fully, but gives you a lot of the same options that usually dev's only have access to). Anyway, this new CFW was quickly figured out by 3rd parties (not Rebug) to give CFW users access to the PSN network again via the dev networks. With a little manipulation of the URL's through a proxy server you could get your hacked console back online. Not that big of a deal, right? Well, it also turns out that some people over at NGU found out that you could provide fake CC# info and the authenticity of the information was never checked as you were on Sony's private developer PSN network (essentially a network that Sony trusted). What happened next was extreme piracy of PSN content. Sony realizing the issue here shut down the network. Now, before you go freaking out about the latest information posted about Kotaku, no ones personal information was accessible via this hack. Not to say they couldn't get it, but no one is admitting to it being available. Anyway, that's the real reason for the PSN downtime. Sony is now rebuilding all of it's PSN servers to be more secure and (hopefully) make sure the CFW users cannot get online anymore.

Well this certainly adds some color to this story... And it really makes me wonder how this will ultimately affect PS3 users as a whole. Sony will obviously fight back, but I feel the average end user will end up having to jump through some hoops to get back onto PSN once this clears up.