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: playstation store
During an interview with MCV, Sony CEO Kaz Hirai ruled out an all-digital future, at least for the PlayStation 4, saying the console will still use optical media.
Sony was generally criticized for launching the PSPGo handheld, which removed the company’s proprietary UMD drives, and turned everything digital, forcing gamers to purchase and download their games through the PlayStation Store.
When asked if the PS4 would use a similar strategy, Hirai responded: “We do business in parts of the world where network infrastructure isn’t as robust as one would hope. There’s always going to be requirement for a business of our size and scope to have a physical medium.”
“To think everything will be downloaded in two years, three years or even ten years from now is taking it a little bit to the extreme.”
Earlier in the month, it was revealed that Sony is already preparing games for the upcoming PlayStation 4, the console which has not even been announced yet.
Many expect a 2012 launch date for the next-gen console.
Result for: playstation store
Sony is still working on a fix for a suspected bug in the clock functionality of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console that caused a variety of errors and problems for PS3 and PSN gamers since last night. The bug only appears to affect the “fat” older version of the PS3, but not the newer slim models.
Sony has advised users of the non-slim models to leave their consoles off until a bug fix is available, saying that certain functionality might be affected by errors, and a risk of not being able to restore certain data. The PlayStation-maker listed the following problems are being reported by users.
The date of the PS3 system may be re-set to Jan 1, 2000.
When the user tries to sign in to the PlayStation Network, the following message appears on the screen; “An error has occurred. You have been signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F)”.
When the user tries to launch a game, the following error message appears on the screen and the trophy data may disappear; “Failed to install trophies. Please exit your game.”
When the user tries to set the time and date of the system via the Internet, the following message appears on the screen; “The current date and time could not be obtained. (8001050F)”
Users are not able to play back certain rental video downloaded from the PlayStation Store before the expiration date.
“We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours. In the meantime, if you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data.” said the company.
