Sony has given a revised forecast for their fiscal year today, adding a large loss resulting from the earthquake and tsunami tragedy in Japan and the security breach of the PlayStation Network.
The company says the PSN breach will cost Sony $171.1 million and the earthquake will cost them a devastating $1.8 billion.
PSN costs were mainly attributed to the cost of the free 1-year of ID theft protection the company is offering all affected, as well as the free games/PlayStation Plus and customer support costs.
Adds Sony (via Gamasutra):
So far, we have not received any confirmed reports of customer identity theft issues, nor confirmed any misuse of credit cards from the cyber-attack. Those are key variables, and if that changes, the costs could change.
In addition, in connection with the data breach, class action lawsuits have been filed against Sony and certain of its subsidiaries and regulatory inquiries have begun; however, those are all at a preliminary stage, so we are not able to include the possible outcome of any of them in our results forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2012 at this moment.
Overall, thanks to the earthquake and the PSN issues, Sony says its fiscal year, ended in March 2011, will be revised down to a $3.2 billion loss from an $858.5 million profit.
Sony did say, however, that the earthquake will not affect the release of the NGP (PSP 2) and that the PlayStation Store would be available again this week.
Result for: class action lawsuits
In late April, Sony was sued in California over its recent firmware update that removed the “OtherOS” feature of the PlayStation 3, a feature that had allowed for the installation of Linux on an HDD partition.
This week, two more class action lawsuits have been filed against the company, one in Georgia and the other in California.
Both cases claim that Sony has made features consumers paid for “inoperable” with the release of firmware version 3.21. The firmware update is “voluntary,” but those that do not cannot sign into the PlayStation Network, or play their games online.
Both suits also state that Sony did not properly disclose that they reserved the right to remove built-in features, and that any removal of the “OtherOS” feature was not disclosed in the PS3 TOS, or SSLA (System Software License Agreement).
The second suit specifically says plaintiffs “lost money by purchasing a PS3 without receiving the benefit of their bargain because the product is not what it was claimed to be - a game console that would provide both the Other OS feature and gaming functions.”
The class action suits include anyone who purchased the PS3 console between November 17th, 2006 and March 27th, 2010.
Result for: class action lawsuits
Apple has announced that they will be settling a pair of class-action lawsuits in Canada stemming from claims that the company misled customers “about the staying power” of the popular iPod MP3 players, especially the gradually dwindling battery life of first and second generation devices.
According to court documents, Apple is offering an online store credit of about $44.75 CAD for those living in Canada that purchased an iPod before June 24, 2004.
To be eligible for the credit, the battery life of your iPod “while continuously playing music — needs to have dropped to five hours or less for the first and second generation of the device and four hours or less for the third generation.”
The lead plaintiffs in the case, two iPod owners, claim that the company misrepresented its product by saying it was capable of 10 hours of continual music playback. It is a well known fact that after even the first recharge, iPod battery lives began declining.
A similar case was settled in the US in 2005 and Apple offered a similar settlement as well. $50 USD in store credit or $25 in cash if the battery life has dwindled to a certain threshold.
