Terms of use. This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Seriously, brick-and-mortar game retailers have never been ignorant to the long-term threat digital distribution posed to their business, or the need to adapt.
While GameStop made all the above announcements in April of , it had actually laid the groundwork for this a couple years earlier. It held onto Kongregate until before selling it to MTG. In fact, around that time investors got fed up with GameStop's performance and began pressuring the company to give up on its efforts to diversify the business. GameStop complied, selling ancillary divisions like Spring Mobile and Simply Mac as it re-focused around its core gaming business. It turns out the long-term prospects of a core gaming retailer are still pretty grim, which basically brings us back to the past year and shareholders once again yelling at GameStop.
Well, now the upset shareholders are running the show, and I for one am eager to see just how they address what seems like an increasingly inexorable slide for the retailer.
GOOD CALL : Puppy Games' Caspian Prince, talking in an interview about the illusory nature of indie developer gold rushes: "By the time you hear about the gold rush, whatever it is that was making people rich has been milked dry.
There was Facebook games, that came and went because Zynga sewed that up. Casual games was the big thing in or , but Big Fish sewed that up.
Hidden object games shortly after. I think iOS is the latest fad, but of course now we've heard about everyone getting rich on it, it's a dead cert that if we port anything to iOS there's going to be no money in it.
We double-checked with Prince this week and he confirmed that Puppy Games never released an iOS title. However, it did bring Titan Attacks to Android, where he said it "made the square root of bugger all.
A day later the company would confirm to the Japanese press that the PSPgo had been axed. Home viewing is very different than movie theatre viewing. I don't think we'll ever get rid of the glasses in movie theatres. Not in my lifetime, anyway, but we're going to get rid of them at home because it's a different viewing model type.
OK, maybe we don't have 3DS-like glasses-free stereoscopic 3D TVs at home like Cameron expected, but we don't have 3D TVs at all now, so he was technically right about us getting rid of the glasses. Within hours, an embattled Sony was forced to explain why it had waited so long to tell its customers the extent of the damage.
We then brought in outside experts to help us learn how the intrusion occurred and to conduct an investigation to determine the nature and scope of the incident. We then shared that information with our consumers and announced it publicly this afternoon.
PSN users rushed to change their passwords elsewhere - but could not alter their details on PSN itself as the service remained offline. Within 24 hours, the first class action lawsuit had been filed. Meanwhile, analysts were quick to point out the huge task Sony had ahead of it to regain user trust. In the days that followed, PSN stayed offline.
Anonymous was implicated in the attack , the UK government weighed in and promised an investigation from the Information Commissioner's Office, and Sony Corporation boss Sir Howard Stringer posted an open letter of apology. On 1st May, Sony hosted a press conference in Tokyo to outline the new security measures it was implementing.
More apologies were offered, and a "Welcome Back" programme for PSN customers was outlined for when the service resumed. Sony also said it would offer subscribers a year of free identity theft protection. Many were pleased at the announcements, although some PS3 owners complained they had all the titles on offer already. New PSN security measures promised included higher levels of data protection and encryption, additional firewalls plus new early warning software.
But questions remained around how hackers had managed to access the information in the first place. Evidence uncovered in the days following pointed to Sony's systems previously being "obselete" and "long-outdated" - charges which Sony subsequently flatly denied. However, a later report suggested Sony had let go security staff prior to the attack and ignored warnings that a privacy breach was possible. By mid-month, Sony was beginning to restore PSN functionality in phases, region by region, service by service.
Gamers weren't the only ones affected. Sony was forced to apologise to developers whose game launches were disrupted by the attack , or whose online services were rendered unavailable. Capcom exec Christian Svensson was one of few to speak publicly , memorably complaining he was "frustrated and upset" the publisher was down "hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars".
Others were less fazed. Inevitably, when PSN did return, there were several days of teething problems as all users were made to request a password reset via email - which then crashed Sony's email server. PSN bounced back, adding another three million users in the four months following the attack. Jack Tretton, then Sony US boss, tackled the issue head on at the start of Sony's E3 press conference , apologising again for the "anxiety caused". Recent Comments. Latest Posts. Most Recent. Load more.
About US Critical Hit is built on the idea that we are more than one thing.
0コメント