PSN Downtime Costing Capcom Big Bucks

Andy Chalk

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Nov 12, 2002
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PSN Downtime Costing Capcom Big Bucks


Capcon Senior Vice President Christian Svensson says the PlayStation Network downtime is costing the company truckloads of money that it was really counting on for future development.

The PlayStation Network nightmare has put the screws to Sony in an untold numbers of ways, but while it was presumably the intended target of the hackers who breached the system, it's definitely not suffering alone. Among the companies caught in the splash is Capcom, and Svennson's none to happy about it.

"I'm frustrated and upset by [the PSN outage] for a number of reasons. As a consumer, I also play games online on PS3, which I can't do... and likely my personal information is also compromised. Secondly I like to buy things in the PlayStation store and that I can't do right now," he wrote on the Capcom Unity blog [http://www.capcom-unity.com/ask_capcom/go/thread/view/7371/27574769/CAPCOM-_How_do_you_feel_about_the_SONY_Hackers?pg=2].

"On a related note, as an executive responsible for running a business, the resulting outage obviously costing us hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in revenue that were planned for within our budget. These are funds we rely on to bring new games to market for our fans," he continued. "In short, the hackers appear to be trying to 'punish' Sony for some perceived injustice, and they've been effective in that I suppose. But they're also punishing millions of other consumers and businesses which makes it impossible to be sympathetic to their 'cause'.

It's a fair point, although I suspect that earning the sympathy of the public wasn't one of the goals of the attack. Still, if it's easy to forget that the collateral damage resulting from this attack affects a great many more companies than Sony, it's also forgivable because it's such an unprecedented mess. The full impact of the PSN downtime may not be felt until long after the service is finally restored and that could still be at least a few weeks away; in the meantime, a more immediate barometer of its effect will likely be seen in tomorrow's release of Brink. Given the strong focus on multiplayer, the absence of online capabilities will probably be very bad news [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/109864-PS3-Brink-Release-On-Schedule-As-Launch-Trailer-Hits-the-Tubes] indeed for the PS3 version of the game.


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erbkaiser

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Jun 20, 2009
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CapCom? Isn't that the only company that managed to make its games UNPLAYABLE because they insist on Ubisoft-like always-on stupidity DRM, what no other company does?
I don't feel any sympathy for them at all. I haven't been able to play Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 even once, out of my entire PSN game collection. Even the PS Plus stuff is still playable with the outage, but not Capcom's releases.
 

Rainforce

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Apr 20, 2009
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[ignoring capcoN typo in the subheadline]
well, I hope at least that brink release will go...somewhat well.
 

DustyDrB

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Jan 19, 2010
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That's the worst effect of this thing so far (so long as the private information doesn't lead to mass identity theft). Developers are being screwed.

Seriously, fuck hackers.
 

mjc0961

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Nov 30, 2009
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Hmm... Are you sure about that, Capcom? Maybe annoying DRM in your games and canceling awesome stuff like Mega Man Universe, saying you won't localize Ace Attorney Investigations 2, and threatening to pull the plug on Mega Man Legends 3 if enough people don't get the Case Zero style offering from the 3DS Store when it launches later this month is costing you big bucks. I mean, yeah, PSN being down doesn't help. But I wouldn't have been buying anything from you even if it was up because you keep failing to bring stuff to market that I, and many others, wanted to buy.
 

yundex

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erbkaiser said:
CapCom? Isn't that the only company that managed to make its games UNPLAYABLE because they insist on Ubisoft-like always-on stupidity DRM, what no other company does?
I don't feel any sympathy for them at all. I haven't been able to play Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 even once, out of my entire PSN game collection. Even the PS Plus stuff is still playable with the outage, but not Capcom's releases.
So wait, the DRM on capcom games doesn't work because of the outage? If so, that's hilarious.
 

erbkaiser

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yundex said:
So wait, the DRM on capcom games doesn't work because of the outage? If so, that's hilarious.
They demand you're logged in to the PSN account that bought the game to play it, which isn't possible when PSN itself is down.
To my knowledge CapCom games are the only games which demand always-online and cannot be played with a different profile (PSN account) on an activated Playstation. Any other developer's games still work now (well, the offline parts at least), and can be accessed by any 'user' on the PS3 and not just the original purchaser's account.
 

Delock

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Bran1470 said:
sooo when is psn comming back??
According to a Gamespot news bit, it will be fully restored May fucking 31st

erbkaiser said:
yundex said:
So wait, the DRM on capcom games doesn't work because of the outage? If so, that's hilarious.
They demand you're logged in to the PSN account that bought the game to play it, which isn't possible when PSN itself is down.
To my knowledge CapCom games are the only games which demand always-online and cannot be played with a different profile (PSN account) on an activated Playstation. Any other developer's games still work now (well, the offline parts at least), and can be accessed by any 'user' on the PS3 and not just the original purchaser's account.
One would think that if you bought it from the store and downloaded it onto a console, you wouldn't need to do another check to see if it really was bought off the PSN, and one would think that you wouldn't need to do this check more than once on the console.

Once again, developers aren't making a good case with DRM of why not to pirate (Note: I'm not advocating piracy, but I am advocating trusting one's consumers rather than treating them like criminals)
 

hermes

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erbkaiser said:
CapCom? Isn't that the only company that managed to make its games UNPLAYABLE because they insist on Ubisoft-like always-on stupidity DRM, what no other company does?
I don't feel any sympathy for them at all. I haven't been able to play Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 even once, out of my entire PSN game collection. Even the PS Plus stuff is still playable with the outage, but not Capcom's releases.
mjc0961 said:
Hmm... Are you sure about that, Capcom? Maybe annoying DRM in your games and canceling awesome stuff like Mega Man Universe, saying you won't localize Ace Attorney Investigations 2, and threatening to pull the plug on Mega Man Legends 3 if enough people don't get the Case Zero style offering from the 3DS Store when it launches later this month is costing you big bucks. I mean, yeah, PSN being down doesn't help. But I wouldn't have been buying anything from you even if it was up because you keep failing to bring stuff to market that I, and many others, wanted to buy.
You Two are missing the point here. Even when Capcom is one of the first in saying it explicitly, the outage is affecting every developer/publisher out there. If a company as big as Capcom is feeling a dent in its revenue because of this, imagine what is going to happen with smaller ones (or those that are counting on Sony's infrastructure, like Pixel Junk).
 

Enrathi

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I'm having trouble seeing the hundreds of thousands, let alone millions of dollars Capcom is supposedly losing. Can anyone explain to me how they make these numbers up?

Edit: I do understand it's affecting developers/publishers, especially the small ones. I just don't really believe these huge numbers that Capcom is throwing around.
 

hermes

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Delock said:
Bran1470 said:
sooo when is psn comming back??
According to a Gamespot news bit, it will be fully restored May fucking 31st
Actually, according to an article from Giantbomb, that piece of information was never confirmed by Sony. To quote a favorite adage in the industry, their official stand now is: "it will be ready when its ready"
 

gigastar

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Sep 13, 2010
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Capcom is far too redundantly structured to go under from a bit of nonsense like this.

Enrathi said:
I'm having trouble seeing the hundreds of thousands, let alone millions of dollars Capcom is supposedly losing. Can anyone explain to me how they make these numbers up?
The next round of updates for Monster Hunter Frontier will rake in enough subscription fees. Yes, it will.

Dr. wonderful said:
Nooo, I wanted a Viewtiful Joe game!

Damn you hackers, DAMN YOU!
Seconded.
Andy Chalk said:
Capcon Senior Vice President Christian Svensson says the PlayStation Network downtime is costing the company truckloads of money that it was really counting on for future development.
Is that a typo or did your finger scoot a couple centimetres to the left of its own accord there?
 

erbkaiser

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hermes200 said:
You Two are missing the point here. Even when Capcom is one of the first in saying it explicitly, the outage is affecting every developer/publisher out there. If a company as big as Capcom is feeling a dent in its revenue because of this, imagine what is going to happen with smaller ones (or those that are counting on Sony's infrastructure, like Pixel Junk).
Nope, I get the point, but Capcom really is the last party that should complain here.
I feel for the developers that are now suffering because PSN is dead, but not for a company that punishes its own customers just out of greed (the only reason they are doing their own DRM is that they want every user of a PS3 to buy another copy of their games, something nobody else does).

To give a PC example, it's like Ubisoft complaining that Steam is down so nobody can buy AC:B for the PC there (fictitious example), when they themselves demand a constant online internet connection just to play the damn game.
 

hermes

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Enrathi said:
I'm having trouble seeing the hundreds of thousands, let alone millions of dollars Capcom is supposedly losing. Can anyone explain to me how they make these numbers up?

Edit: I do understand it's affecting developers/publishers, especially the small ones. I just don't really believe these huge numbers that Capcom is throwing around.
Its just an estimate. Capcom will say "we sold x thousands of dollars on PSN games in the days prior to the outage, and now we are selling 0,00. Therefore, those x dollars by days the system is offline gives us the amount we are not getting." They are likely including the difference between expected and real PS3 games sales during these weeks in the bill to Sony, though...

Its not accurate as a cost and its not fair to Sony, but its likely the closest people will get of the cost of the outage.
 

Snotnarok

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Does anyone here actually care about capcoms complaints considering they're one of the only devs who have "Must be online" drm with their games?