It’s been a long, rough road for Sony following a data breach that compromised the information of over 100 million possible PlayStation Network and Sony Online Entertainment users. What followed was heavy criticism of Sony’s handling of the situation, reports of outdated security measures, and users growing impatient due to the sheer length of the outage.
However, after nearly a month since it was taken down, restoration of both PSN and the SOE network has finally begun.
While the network still isn’t up and running, at least at the time of writing this, Sony’s Patrick Seybold and Kazuo Hirai have announced on the PlayStation Blog that the phased restoration has indeed begun, although it may take hours before the system is back up and running. However, some network features, such as the PlayStation Store, will still take some time before they are restored, with Sony focusing more on online play during the first phase of this restoration.
Announcing the beginning of the network restoration, Sony Executive Kazuo Hirai addressed gamers directly:
In addition to just PSN, Sony Online Entertainment has also announced the beginning of their own service restoration efforts and the end to this whole Sony fiasco finally appears within sight.
While it may take a few hours or may even till tomorrow for gamers see PSN and SOE up and running again, disgruntled Sony users should at least be glad that the end of the outage is finally near.