Articles about Sony

When Sony Pictures was hacked, it was a horrible situation for the company. Not only were its computers knocked offline, but the content of corporate emails were disclosed, embarrassing both the company and individual employees. Sadly, this hack escalated into a terrorist threat, which ultimately led to the opening of film, 'The Interview', being put on hiatus.

While this was a huge blow to Sony and free speech overall, the good guys are getting the last laugh. Today, on the Eve of Christmas, Google and Microsoft shock the world and announce that you can watch The Interview today on Google Play, YouTube movies and Xbox Video!

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Plex, who makes a popular media server and client software package, has never been shy about adapting any platform it can manage to get on. Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, Roku, Xbox, even NAS devices. Now the organization reaches out to yet another community.

While jokingly saying at the beginning that it was arriving on Sega Genesis consoles, the real target this time is Sony. Plex is headed for both games consoles available from the currently troubled company -- the PS3 and PS4.

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Readers have been asking me to write about the recent network hack at Sony Pictures Entertainment. If you run a company like Sony Pictures it has to be tough to see your company secrets stolen all at once -- salaries, scripts, and Social Security numbers all revealed along with a pre-release HD copy of Annie, not to mention an entire database of unhappy Sony employees who want to work anywhere Adam Sandler doesn’t. But frankly my dear I don’t give a damn about any of that so let’s cut to the heart of this problem which really comes down to executive privilege.

Sony was hacked because some president or vice-president or division head or maybe an honest-to-God movie star didn’t want something stupid like network security to interfere with their Facebook/YouTube/porn/whatever workplace obsession. Security at Sony Pictures wasn’t breached, it was abandoned, and this recent hack is the perfectly logical result.

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4K video is a runaway train at this point -- it is no longer a fad. It is looking like it will definitely become the next widely-adopted standard. While many people say 1080p is "good enough", that type of mindset stops progress. In the technology world, nothing is ever good enough; we must always push for more.

Unfortunately, 4K content is a bit rare at the moment, but growing every day. Today, Amazon announces that Prime members can watch 4K content for free. While this is very exciting news, there is a catch.

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Sony Pictures Entertainment faces being left completely red-faced after reports began to emerge that it contributed to its latest data breach by storing thousands of passwords in a folder entitled "Password".

Personal details of some 47,000 employees and actors have been leaked online in recent days and the much-publicized leak contains confidential details including social security numbers and reams of other tidbits, according to The Telegraph.

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Gamers today found that they were unable to connect to the PlayStation Network. In what appears to be a hack attack, the gaming network as well as the PlayStation Store were knocked offline. Claiming responsibility this time is the hacking outfit Lizard Squad.

Sony has not revealed any details about what has happened yet, but it's clear that the outage did not come as a result of routine maintenance. Lizard Squad tweeted a message that seemed to claim responsibility for the downtime: "PSN Login #offline #LizardSquad".

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The Street Fighter franchise is one that has been quiet for a while now, but Street Fighter V is on the way. Capcom has confirmed that work is currently underway on the latest instalment of the game, bringing an end to months of speculation and rumor. But that is not the end of the news.

It has been revealed that Street Fighter will appear exclusively on PS4 and PC. Owners of Microsoft's Xbox One console will miss out this time around, but there's an interesting feature for anyone who does buy the game on the two supported platforms -- cross-platform play.

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20 years ago today, Sony’s beloved PlayStation console was released in Japan. Launched into a gaming world utterly dominated by Sega and Nintendo, the PlayStation quickly became the must-have console. I got my initial first-hand experience of it at E3, and remember it being pretty much the only thing people there were talking about. I was (and still am) a dedicated PC gamer, and the PlayStation was the first games console I ever bought.

Sony’s PlayStation was an essential purchase for gaming fans -- especially those into driving and fighting games, which the console excelled at -- and it’s fair to say the PlayStation quickly had a massive impact on the gaming world, leaving a legacy that is still very much in evidence today.

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A number of unreleased movies, as well as some confidential data, has been leaked online following a massive hack at Sony Pictures that happened last week.

In the Reddit thread covering the issue it says that, movies aside, confidential data including visa and passport information of cast and crew members working on different Sony projects, email inboxes and other important documents were leaked.

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Sony has been hit with an order to issue partial refunds to customers who bought PlayStation Vita consoles. The Federal Trade Commission found that the company had produced false advertising for the handheld console which suggested that the PS Vita had certain features when in fact it did not. Anyone who bought the console before June 1 2012 is entitled to either $25 cash or credit, or a $50 voucher.

Adverts for the three year old console suggested that players could start a game on a PS3 and pick up from where they left off on a PS Vita console. This feature was only supported by a small number of games. Ads also suggested that 3G subscribers could engage in live online games when in fact this was not possible.

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Sony will enter the wearable market with a high-tech watch made of electronic paper, reports indicate. The watch will likely debut early next year as one of the company’s first products from a division aimed at refocusing the company on innovation.

The watch is said to emphasize style over technology, and features a display that wraps around the entire wrist. This means both the face and wristband would be able to function as a display and change the user interface based on how the watch is used.

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It must be coming up to Christmas; Alienware, the game-focused arm of Dell, is beginning to ship its new gaming console. The Alienware Alpha is described as the world's first PC gaming console, and it has been designed to blend the power of a gaming rig with the ease of use of a console. With prices starting at $549, gamers have the ability to customize their hardware to suit their needs. The Alpha runs Windows 8.1, and it includes either 4GB or 8GB of RAM, as well as a USB adapted Xbox 360 controller.

The price of the console is bumped up for anyone opting to increase the size of the hard drive or speed of the processor, but the aim here is to blow the Xbox One and PS4 out of the water with raw power.

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Today marks a monumental moment for Microsoft -- 10 million Xbox consoles have been shipped to stores. I don't care who you are, you must admit that is an impressive feat. Of course, Sony reached that milestone months earlier, but this should not detract from Microsoft's achievement.

Quite frankly, the video game console race is a jog, not a sprint. In other words, the PlayStation 4's early lead is not guaranteed forever; the Xbox One is still in the game (pun intended). Not only is the Xbox One now $50 less expensive than the PS4, but it has some exclusive titles that will have gamers overlooking its competitor, such as Halo and Sunset Overdrive. Yep, Sony should definitely be worried.

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If you’ve been following the sales of Microsoft and Sony’s next gen consoles, you’ll know that the PS4 has been outselling its rival each month. However, a year after they went on sale we finally get to see the scale of the sales difference between the two.

In the last quarter, Sony shipped 4.1 million PlayStations globally, of which 3.3 million were PlayStation 4s. Microsoft on the other hand shipped 2.4 million Xbox units. Now we don’t know how many of those were Xbox Ones, and how many were Xbox 360s (Microsoft doesn’t provide a breakdown), but given the older console still sells very well, it’s safe to assume the PS4 sales were double that of the Xbox One in that quarter. Now, let’s look at the bigger picture.

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Sony is known for its engineering prowess in a lot of consumer goods, such as TVs, Walkmans, cameras, etc. But what it is not known for -- in any good way, at least -- is software. Sony's software is generally the low point of its product, which isn't unexpected, as software was never the firm's focus. So, when you look at the PS4 and Xbox One, you will notice Sony's advantage in pure gaming, while Microsoft brings software features likes apps (e.g. Skype), and multi-window support.

Sony's update today finally delivers some of the 'next-gen' software features it bragged about a year ago. Share Play is now available and lets your friend join your game, even if they don't own it themselves. There are some limitations without a PlayStation Plus membership, but that was to be expected. YouTube will finally get an app on the PlayStation store. Additionally, you can now use the 'Share' button to upload gameplay highlights directly to YouTube from your PS4.

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