RAGEFACE: PSN outage, Day 4

Sony's Playstation Network is *still* down.

The latest from the Playstation Blog says:

We sincerely regret that PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have been suspended, and we are working around the clock to bring them both back online. Our efforts to resolve this matter involve re-building our system to further strengthen our network infrastructure. Though this task is time-consuming, we decided it was worth the time necessary to provide the system with additional security.

We thank you for your patience to date and ask for a little more while we move towards completion of this project. We will continue to give you updates as they become available.

"Re-building out system"? What the hell? What exactly is going on here? This seems like something more than a simple network intrusion. And what sort of "additional security" does Sony have in mind here? Does this have anything to do with the Amazon EC2 outage?

Basically at this point, Sony needs to make with some real answers. Even for a free service, 4 days of downtime? Over Easter Weekend (which can either be a long weekend or the end of April vacation for some)? Come on! I can't imagine how angry everyone who picked up SOCOM 4 this week has to be right now.

Thank goodness XBL is still up...

SOCOM 4

With the sudden announcement of SOCOM 4 for the Playstation 3, I suddenly find myself with old wounds being reopened. These wounds, caused by the train-wreck of a game SOCOM: Confrontation developed by Slant 6 (instead of SOCOM creators Zipper), were in fact pretty deep.

SOCOM: Confrontation appeared at my local store from out of nowhere. I recall being aware that a SOCOM game was in the works for the PS3, however i was under the impression it's release date wasn't anytime soon. I was shocked to find the game on the shelf as well as shocked at the apparent lack of warning from the video gaming press (i'm willing to meet everyone half way on this point, there's a chance i simply didn't notice any press on the release)... and most importantly there were NO reviews of the title before it's release.

I was not about to let any of this bother me, because after all, this was SOCOM! A Playstation franchise that's an automatic buy for MANY people. So i proceeded to pick up 2 copies with the premium Sony Blue Tooth mic - one for myself and one to surprise a friend for his birthday. That's a $120 blind buy. Based on the SOCOM name alone.

That first night of it's release i was unable to actually try the game - the servers were simply overloaded. The 2nd night i actually managed to get into a game... and thus began a long road of broken game play, server instability, glitches, and many times - the inability to actually get into a game. Slant 6 promised patches - which never seemed to fix as many issues as promised, and always introduced NEW issues. Long story short - S:C was released 10/14/2008 and it's STILL broken. To add insult to injury, Sony and Slant 6 released a map pack (timed with yet another patch) for $15.

Good luck with that Slant 6.

So now, much to my surprise, Sony has announced SOCOM 4, and it's under development by Zipper (the team responsible for creating the first bunch of SOCOM games and building up all the good will for the franchise).

Look, SOCOM 4 will sell like crazy on it's name alone. There is a small percentage of SOCOM fans who claim S:C is a great game. But i am not one of them. SOCOM 4 will not be a title i will purchase after the hell that was S:C. I am fully aware that one sale won't make a difference one way or another, but whatever, I'm done with SOCOM.

(HOWEVER - I'd be more than happy to do a 1:1 trade of S:C for a SOCOM 4 disk. You shipped me a broken game that still doesn't work, how about you replace it with a working game?)