Sony Corp. declared a return to the smartphone business on Sunday, unveiling its first smartphones under the Sony brand, but warned the group's painful transition would not be as fast as rebranding.
Kazuo Hirai is due to formally take over as Sony CEO on April 1, replacing Howard Stringer. Hirai said that while some management changes had already been identified there was still a long way to go to "explain to everybody who's doing what."
The local domain sonyvaio.com.au has been hacked and a defacement page posted claiming credit for the attack. A Malaysian-based group bragged on a since-removed Facebook post, “W00t SONY VAIO Australia hacked.” However, Gizmodo AU checked whois records and found the domain actually belongs to TX Computer Solutions, an authorised Sony reseller.
It's a confusing time in the world of mobile and portable gaming. Consumers seem to be moving away from the idea that they need an entirely separate device to play games on the go, settling for cheap, generally simple touchscreen games on their cell phones and tablets. Nintendo, following up the insanely successful DS system that rested on a seemingly gimmicky double screen design, added a newer glasses-free 3D gimmick to its Nintendo 3DS—only to see extremely slow sales force it into a premature price drop.
A new version of the PS3's internal system software is being rolled out and it revolves around one major change, though in earnest, gamers won't even notice a real difference.
Sony company plans to roll out software version 4.10 to the console today. Users will be required to download and install the new firmware before they are allowed to take the system online for Web browsing, online gaming, or any other purpose.
At a time, one of the PlayStation Vita's biggest selling points was a "Remote Play" feature that would essentially allow people to play any PlayStation 3 title on the shiny new handheld. As it turns out, the feature is maddeningly restricted to a paltry selection of games (Peggle? Bejeweled 2? Really?), which is carefully managed by a series of mandatory firmware updates. However, a hacked version of the PS3's 3.55 firmware highlights a very interesting loophole.
You could almost hear the collective groans from gamers who discovered that Sony's PlayStation Network is offline today. Could it be that Sony is once again the victim of a hacker attack, one in which the real victims are online players who just want to get their gaming groove on? And worse yet, does this mean everyone's accounts have been compromised? Luckily, the answer is 'no'.
"PlayStation Network will be offline for routine scheduled maintenance on Thursday, January 19th from approximately 8AM until 9PM PST," Sony announced in a blog post.
Coordinated teams of hacktivists will wage war on Sony on Monday to punish the company for supporting the controversial US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
The Anonymous collective plans to hack Sony.com and load the homepage with BitTorrent files that allow users to download copyright-protected music and movies -- the very action SOPA is designed to prevent.
The race is on. Proving that no gadget is hack-proof, homebrew developers have discovered an exploit in the PS Vita and have used it to get Sega Genesis games running on the handheld.
On the market (Asian) for a little over two weeks, the PS Vita got its first "Hello World" just before the end of 2011 and now, the next level of hacking has begun.
The Sony PS Vita has just released in Japan, and hackers are already closing in on a way to jailbreak the brand new next-gen Sony PS Vita handheld.
The infamous hacker SKFU is already hard at work trying to crack the Sony PS Vita, and you have to believe that it is only a matter of time before the job of done and homebrew applications are running on the handheld.
It’s by no means been an easy year for Sony: first, it was hit by supply problems from the Japanese earthquake, then hackers caused its PlayStation Network all sorts of gyp – and now half of its Thai manufacturing facility is underwater. What next – a plague of frogs? And that’s not even mentioning the strength of the yen at the moment. So it’s no surprise, really, that the electronics manufacturer reported today that it’s on track to make a 90bn yen (£719m) loss this year – which contrasts pretty strongly with July’s prediction of a 60bn yen profit…
