PlayStation Network: It's Alive! Now with free stuff [UPDATE]

Mike Bantick
Tuesday, 17 May 2011 10:45

Opinion and Analysis

It stuttered, it blew smoke, it rumbled, it coughed and then last night roared into life.  The PlayStation Network has been resurrected into a, hopefully, more secure form, ready for action.  Sony has now given out the details of its 'Welcome Back' programme with free games and PlayStation Plus subscriptions.

For almost a month now the PlayStation Network has been down, depriving gamers of any online gaming fun, or the chance for Sony to redeem some cold hard cash in the form of digitally distributed content.

Last night, (In the Australian region at least) Sony rolled out the activation of the new and supposedly more secure PlayStation Network with PS3 firmware upgrade 3.61.

Today we get the details (see below) of the Welcome Back programme, designed to make PSN users happy, but perhaps not really garner much in the way of warm-fuzzies around improved security functionality, though you will need to change your password.

It is all well and good for Sony to tighten password restrictions, now requiring an eight character (including digits) password for access to the network, but if they don't improve security of the database where this information held.

If even some of the rumours around the April 19th security breach are true, we need to hope Sony sys-admins have been very hard at work behind the scenes of this new improved network.  Rumours such as unpatched Apache servers, lack of a firewall, passwords stored in clear text and more have fuelled trepidation about returning to PSN.

Still when I tried to download 3.61 firmware last night, it was obvious the network was under load with returning PlayStationites, so perhaps trepidation is outweighed by anticipation of getting back online for many. [UPDATE] The PSN may be up and running, but the PlayStation Store is still to be revived.

Check out PAGE TWO for what freebies you can retrieve when you get back online.