Sony and hackers

Sony just can't get it going, first a lot of financial problems and now even the hackers giving them a hard time.  This time the target was the PlayStation Network.

Sony had previously announced that the network will be shut down on Monday due to routine server maintenance, but what they didn't expect was that the hackers will fallow. Huge DDoS  attack has hit the PlayStation Network, engineers are doing what they can but the network will be shut down for some time. Only good news is that no personal information was accessed by hackers, at least that's what they claim at Sony.

It wasn't long before some group claimed responsibility, this time it was Lizard Squad hackers. PlayStation Network wasn't the only thing they hacked, Blizzard, Riot Games and Grinding Gear were also under DDoS attacks. Looks like Sony got the most of it, and not only that, hackers diverted the flight of Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley to San Diego by stating there is an explosives on-board.

Sony issued a statement regarding these events saying: "Like other major networks around the world, the PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network have been impacted by an attempt to overwhelm our network with artificially high traffic. Although this has impacted your ability to access our network and enjoy our services, no personal information has been accessed. We will continue to work towards fixing this issue and hope to have our services up and running as soon as possible. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused."

Sony is just out of luck, the only thing that was selling, and making record sales, was the PlayStation 4. Single handed delivering the company into a fiscal plus in the last financial quarter, and now the PlayStation Network has been hacked. Who knows will this have any impact on sales and will the attacks fallow or is this just the one time thing.

Source shacknews.

New selfie phone by Sony

Selfie smartphones are the new trend, well not yet but big companies are making them. Sony is getting ready to release the new selfie phone named Cyber-shot DSC-KW11 . That probably want be the name on the market, just something it's called at the moment.

Everybody is doing selfies, almost everybody, but hey you have to admit you keep seeing them everywhere. Some of them are OK and some of them are just annoying as hell, people cant go to the bathroom or grab a snack to eat without doing a few selfies. Hate it or love it, they are here and probably here to stay.

Of course companies want to cash in on this madness, because you know big companies are all about giving people what they want and right now people want selfies. So Sony is preparing to launch a new smartphone with a huge front facing camera. t has a 19.2-megapixel swivel camera with f/2.0 wide-angle lens, 1/2.3-inch Exmor RS CMOS sensor and a focal length of 21mm and LED flash on the top. This can rotate 180-degrees.

Phone even looks like a perfume bottle, really don't know if this is good or bad, same say it's great, some hate it, sale results as always will be the ultimate judge. This means it will probably be marketed for women, it should be in stores by October in certain markets. Price is still not known.

Sony isn't the only company that's bringing the selfie smartphone, the king of smartphone cameras Nokia is also planing a selfie phone. Lumia 730 should have a great front facing camera. Looks like this could be the new specification frontier in smartphone wars. Who knows, pretty soon the front facing camera will be better then the one on the back.

Source hardwarezone.

New swimer from Sony

Sony has another smartphone that is not afraid of water. New Xperia M2 Aqua is not only water-resistant but is also has nice hardware specifications.

Lets just sum up what this phone has to offer first. Display is 4.8 inches, with the resolution of 540 x 960 pixels, that's 230 ppi. It has quad core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 procesor which will allow you to run thing pretty smoothly. System memory is 1024 MB RAM with 8 GB of build-in storage, 5 GB is user storage, you can expand that with micro SD up to 32 GB. Battery is 2300 mAh, nothing major but it will get you trow the day. Back camera is 8 megapixels and front camera is 1.1 megapixel.

Among other things it supports NFC, so you can connect this smartphone with a lot of other Sony devices or any other devices that also support NFC technology. Operating system is Android 4.4 Kitkat and you get all of the Sony available apps on the phone. All of these things combined make this a great mid-range smartphone that's going to be on the market in a few weeks. It will be available in Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific.

First of all, nice job Sony in bringing us another water proof smartphone, we are glad to see that you didn't give up on this technology and continuing to improve it. Secondly, why aren't other smartphone manufacturers fallowing this example. Everyone wants their smartphone to be water resistant, and almost no other company is developing smartphones that can resist water. People want this to happen, technology is here, so whats the hold up. Sony show them how it's done.

Source cnet.

PlayStation 4 reaches 10 million units sold

Recently Sony reported they where finally making some profit after a long time ant it's mostly thanks to their new generation console PlayStation 4. Just last quarter their profit was up by 757 percent.

No official results were given on PlayStation 4 sale results back then but now during Gamescom Sony has announce that they have reached 10 million sold devices in just nine months. Great results for Sony as the company isn't doing that well in other areas. Nice to see that there is at least one department that's kicking ass.

Console wars are always an interesting topic, lots of people fallow these numbers regardless do they have a next generation console or not. During the previous console wars Xbox 360 was the first to reach the number of 10 million sold and Microsoft beat Sony and went to become the winner in that console war. Wander will 10 million milestone be the key this time, Sony definitely hopes it will.

SCE CEO Andrew House said: "The responses we have received for the PS4 system's unique gameplay experiences powered by the network, along with its vast game portfolio has been phenomenal, and I am absolutely delighted that PS4 was able to reach this commemorative milestone in less than 9 months. We're so grateful for the enormous support from PlayStation gamers worldwide, and we look forward to bringing even more exciting content and services in the months ahead."

He wasn't wrong people that bought the PlayStation 4 are very happy with the gaming console so far. Sure things are not perfect, there will always be some issues and the games that use the power of the new console haven't arrived yet, but the general experience is great.

Console wars have just started, only nine months has passed and already so many developments. Remember these next generation consoles will be on the market for years so it will definitely be interesting to see how things continue to develop.

Source wsj.

Sony Making Profit Thanks to PlayStation 4

Recent quarters haven't been a financial success for the Japanese company, but it looks like that all could possibly change and it has much to do with the Playstation 4.

Playstation 4 has been selling like crazy in the U.S. and Europe and it's definitely the best selling console of the new generation, not that Microsoft has anything to complain about with their Xbox One sales results. Great success of the gaming console will not be enough for Sony, other parts of the company will have to start making profit if they intend to remain in profit.

This quarter Sony had a net profit of 26.8 billion yen which is a 757 percent better then the same quarter lat year. Amazing, who can even remember when some company had a 757 percent increase in profit. No matter how great these results are Sony is still expecting a yearly net loss of 50 billion yen.

Company is still in reconstruction that is the cause of layoffs and their decision to sell their Viao computer department. Smartphone sales are also not something that the company is happy with so they still have a lot of things to improve on, but hey 757 percent increase in profit is definitely a step in the right direction.

Source JOYSTIQ.

Sony Allegedly selling its PC business

PlayStation 4 was selling like crazy during this holiday season, but not all of the Sony departments are doing well at the moment. Their smartphone line Xperia isn't selling the way they would want to, although the reviews and the quality of the smartphones are great, but the sales results are simply not there. Sony PC department is also taking a beating at the market. In fact there have been rumors that there is a 70 percent chance that the company will bankrupt in the next 2 years.

According to the news service Nikkei from Japan, Sony is looking to sell their PC business for $492 million. From the company they have released a statement saying "continues to address various options", what ever that means. Some even go so far with saying that the sale news could come in the next few days. Doubt they will have a hard time finding a buyer, $492 million isn't such a high price compared to what the IT giants have been spending lately on purchase of other companies.

So what's next for the Japanese company. Their results in the entertainment are great so they will probably want to focus on that department. There have also been a lot of rumors lately about Sony making smartphones with Windows Phone operating system. This could be a solution for them considering their Android sales are low.

Source engadget.

Sony and Windows Phone

Sony has been rumored to bring a Windows Phone device from the very start of the WP release. So far we have seen some prototypes but never a smartphone with the WP operating system was released from Sony. Well it looks like the year 2014 just might be the year when Sony will deliver a Windows Phone smartphone.

In the last few years Sony has been making great smartphones for Android, but they still don't have great sales results compared to Samsung, the company that's dominating the Android market. So the Windows Phone option just might be the new thing that Sony is looking for. Even Sony Mobile Europe chief Pierre Perron said that they don't want to be a company with just one OS.

“We don’t want to be a single OS manufacturer, I don’t think it’s a viable position in the long term,” Perron said.

Microsoft wants more of the big companies to get involved in the Windws Phone ecosystem, and even they bought Nokia and are planing to develop there own hardware they still want other companies to use their operating system. In recent talks with Samsung and HTC, Microsoft has offered them a free Windows Phone on all smartphones that they produce. This is an attempt to compete with Android, will just have to wait and see if this strategy will bring better results.

Source techradar.

China Lifts Ban on Foreign Game Consoles

Next generation game consoles were a big hit during this holiday season, but not everywhere in the world. China is a country where it's not legal to sale foreign game consoles, well at least that was the situation until now.

China’s State Council has temporarily lifted the ban for foreign game consoles. Witch was in effect for full 14 years, ever since 2000. No further detail were provided, very short message from the Council. Keep in mind that the key word here is temporarily. But non the less this is great news for all the gamers in China and the game consoles companies. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo can now sale their popular consoles in China one of the biggest markets in the world.

Both Sony and Microsoft released their new consoles in November and the sales results were great so far. Sony sold 4.2 million PlayStation 4 units and Microsoft 3 million Xbox One units. This decision will definitely increase those numbers. great

Source The Reuters.

PlayStation 4 sold 4.2 million devices, Xbox One 3 million

Both Sony and Microsoft have reason to brag about sales in the last quarter of 2014, as far as the new generation consoles are considered. Gamers have been waiting a long time for next gen consoles and the sales results show that.

During the CES Sony event they announced that in 2013 4.2 million Playstation 4 units have been sold. This is an impressive number considering that the console was launched 15 November for North America and 29 November for Europe.

Earlier Microsoft issued a press release about Xbox One sales in 2013. The console that was launched 22 November in 13 countries was sold in 3 million units in 2013. Still less then PlayStation 4 but an impressive number not the less and people at Microsoft are happy with the results.

Looks like this holiday season was all about gamers and consoles. Next gen consoles have just arrived and they have a lot more to show in the upcoming years, so it's going to be interesting to see how things go from here.

More on the story right here.

PlayStation 4 Sold 2.1 Million in November

Sony is saying that they have sold 2.1 million PlayStation 4 devices in the month of November. This is double of the number sold on their opening day in which they sold 1 million devices in North America alone. Since then they have started to sell the console in UK and Europa. This is the official statement on the PlayStation blog.


In what is shaping up to be a historic year for gamers, I’m delighted to share an important new milestone with you. PS4’s North American debut on November 15th was PlayStation’s largest ever, with more than one million gamers picking up a PS4 in just 24 hours. Now, with PS4’s global launch expanding to a total of 32 countries worldwide, including Europe and Latin America, I’m proud to announce that more than 2.1 million PS4s have been sold.


However the competition isn't falling behind. Microsoft has started selling Xbox One in 12 countries on day one and sold 1 million devices. Witch is a new record for Microsoft and Xbox. According to the projections on Black Friday, Xbox One is the best selling console with 31% overall sales. Just barley behind is the  Xbox 360 with 30% and then PlayStation 3 and 4 with 15%. Nintendo Wii U only at 6%.

Microsoft still hasn't announced any official results from Black Friday or overall sales of the Xbox One.

More on the story right here.

64% of Gamers Will Not Buy Next-Gen Consoles

According to Reuters 64% of gamers won't buy next generation consoles this Christmas. However this poll is very limited, only 1,297 people participated in the poll. This includes Nintendo 2DS, Steam Machines, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. With all the consoles that are already out on the market, there is definitely a lot of choice for the gamers these holidays.

In the poll people would rather buy PlayStation 4 (26%)  then the Xbox One (15%). Microsoft had a lot of complaints from gamers after they announced the console, because of their decision that you always have to be online and you can't sell your own games. Later they reversed this decision. Sony's console is also cheaper $399. Xbox One is $499 but it includes Kinect while Sony does not include PlayStation Move, witch will cost $60.

Sony announced in Germany that they received more then 1 million pre-orders for the PlayStation 4. Microsoft didn't go into numbers but they did say that pre-orders for the Xbox One are better then of it's predecessor Xbox 360.

Another problem for Sony and Microsoft is that their consoles are on almost 10 year cycle.While many of the new Android consoles will be on the one year cycle. Plus there is a lot of tablets that support game controllers, and it's very easy to connect tablets to the TV. Tablets are already very powerful and with the competitive market they are getting stronger every year. So it's going to be very interesting to see ow long can these next-gen consoles rule the market. Right now even 5 years seems like a stretch.

More on the poll right here.

Sony Will Loose Money on PlayStation 4

When PlayStation 4 hits the stores Sony will not be making any money from selling the console. In fact they will be loosing money each time they sell a PlayStation 4. This will be minimal loss, somewhere about 60 USD, witch they will get back once a buyer buys a game and gets a PlayStation Plus membership.

Sony is hopping that PlayStation 4 will become profitable much faster then it's predecessor. PlayStation 3 had a high production cost because of the Cell processor, so it only become profitable after a few years of selling.

Microsoft has announced that they will be selling the Xbox One console whithout losses. Xbox One is a 100 USD more expensive but Kinect is included in the price, while with the PlayStation 4 you have to buy PlayStation Move separately.

Both companies Sony and Microsoft have invested a lot of money in their next generation consoles, so we guess these console wars should be interesting. Witch will be the best thing for the gamers worldwide.