Friday, May 6, 2011

Hackers hurting gamers.

Recently, the gaming giant Sony PlayStation was hacked by anonymous person, otherwise known as an online “hactivist.” Sony announced to their users that their system was down and that it was being put under construction. The real story was that over seventy-seven million PlayStation users personal information was breached and available for access. The criminal responsible for this breach of PlayStation’s security is still at large and is far from being caught. This has TREMENDOUS ramifications for PlayStation’s users; almost all of their information could have been confiscated and used without any of them knowing. Sony PlayStation will have to undergo a complete security makeover. They are going to have to start from the ground up, and rebuild their once indestructible security system. From an economic standpoint, the amount of new PlayStation users would most likely drop, as well as the demand for a new version of the system. The lack of security that online users are facing is immense; they are open to an attack on their information at any time. The marginal revenue for Sony and their product PlayStation will also be affected. There won’t be any additional income from selling the gaming system for a while, due to the fear of losing credit card information. Sony is now currently rebuilding their security and they have said to be in the final stages of this rebuilding. Some of the costs for PlayStation most likely won’t be affected though. For instance, the operating cost should not change as well as the marginal cost. Is this hack of PlayStation’s security going to hurt the gaming giant for the future? Or is this just one minor slip up that will be blown over in a matter of time? Only time will tell…
-Mason Reiter

1 comment:

  1. This event that has occurred to the gamer world is negatively affecting Sony Playstation users. Around the world there is a guy who hacked through Sony Playstation’s security and accessed it. This has never been done before and has never occurred till this man figured out how to hack it. Sony told their users the normal, “Our system is down and is under construction” which made them believe it would get better soon, but this event has led them to not have access at all anymore. This will affect the Sony users demand for Playstation’s anymore. They would feel like the security for Playstation isn’t good enough and won’t trust it anymore. They won’t buy anymore for Playstation because even after the new system is built and secured people would not chance to have their information hacked again. But, the good news for Sony is that they would not have to change their marginal cost or operating cost.

    ReplyDelete