PSN Issues (Again)
Discussion
The Playstation network was down again last night, not the end of the world\first world issues etc but I really find it a bit p*ss poor to be honest. I work in the IT industry so know a bit about this stuff, really how hard can it be to make a resilient network? I know companies with a fraction of the resources of Sony who manage to run a world wide comms\server network with none of these issues. Have they not heard of resilience, failover, BC, DR etc?
I don't think Xbox live have nearly as many issues, it really does feel like amateur hour at Sony sometimes. This is about the 5th outage in recent memory IIRC, really not good enough for a company of Sony's size. They need to sack their network\infrastructure guys and hire someone who knows what they are doing. Sony, I am available for a modest fee (and a free lifetimes supply of playstation games.)
I don't think Xbox live have nearly as many issues, it really does feel like amateur hour at Sony sometimes. This is about the 5th outage in recent memory IIRC, really not good enough for a company of Sony's size. They need to sack their network\infrastructure guys and hire someone who knows what they are doing. Sony, I am available for a modest fee (and a free lifetimes supply of playstation games.)
Sorry sir, but respectively I find this attitude towards Sony downright disgraceful. Their service is free and it is up more than 90% of my playtime (which is actually quite alot), with only Steam having a more reliable connection. All over facebook last night people were ranting how it wasn't good enough and it was shameful. Seriously, it was one or two nights? It might have also been down over xmas but that is family time.
Really if you don't like it please go and buy an xbox, my experience of xbox live has been nothing short of pathetic. It's down more often than it's not and it's slow when it's up. Then you get to the paying side of things, I've still got my 360 to enjoy Forza but in reality I cannot do anything online because you HAVE to have gold and pay through the nose with it. Right now I can look at all the paint jobs I'd like to buy, but I can't because I HAVE to pay. So if I pay my 8bazillion pounds to microsoft I get a shoddy unreliable bit of tosh and access to the all the things I should have access to anyway.
On the other hand I pay for Playstation Plus, I get a good reliable fast connection, I then get some little bonus' like very occasional cheaper games and free games (which are actually exceptionally good - Journey anyone?). The best bit, if I got tired of all the free games I got I could cancel my plus subscription but still have access to all the great things that are available to me now.
Really if you don't like it please go and buy an xbox, my experience of xbox live has been nothing short of pathetic. It's down more often than it's not and it's slow when it's up. Then you get to the paying side of things, I've still got my 360 to enjoy Forza but in reality I cannot do anything online because you HAVE to have gold and pay through the nose with it. Right now I can look at all the paint jobs I'd like to buy, but I can't because I HAVE to pay. So if I pay my 8bazillion pounds to microsoft I get a shoddy unreliable bit of tosh and access to the all the things I should have access to anyway.
On the other hand I pay for Playstation Plus, I get a good reliable fast connection, I then get some little bonus' like very occasional cheaper games and free games (which are actually exceptionally good - Journey anyone?). The best bit, if I got tired of all the free games I got I could cancel my plus subscription but still have access to all the great things that are available to me now.
You have to pay for a PSN+ subscription to be able to play online as of a couple of years ago so it's not free anymore. Previously I used to cut them some slack as it was free but now it's not I expect a lot better.
I've actually owned all the Playstations so you could say I am more of a Sony fan but when I had an Xbox 360 for a couple of years, the Live service was just better I'm afraid. They might try to rob you with micro-transactions but that's not a fault of the service itself which is actually slicker and more stable then PSN.
I just find it odd that a company of Sony's size can't do better, the uptime is actually higher than 90% more like 99% probably but for a company of that size, it should be aiming for five 9's reliability on it's premium online service and they are nowhere near that over the last 18 months, not to mention getting hacked several times.
I've actually owned all the Playstations so you could say I am more of a Sony fan but when I had an Xbox 360 for a couple of years, the Live service was just better I'm afraid. They might try to rob you with micro-transactions but that's not a fault of the service itself which is actually slicker and more stable then PSN.
I just find it odd that a company of Sony's size can't do better, the uptime is actually higher than 90% more like 99% probably but for a company of that size, it should be aiming for five 9's reliability on it's premium online service and they are nowhere near that over the last 18 months, not to mention getting hacked several times.
Guvernator said:
You have to pay for a PSN+ subscription to be able to play online as of a couple of years ago so it's not free anymore. Previously I used to cut them some slack as it was free but now it's not I expect a lot better.
Only if you have a PS4 and want to play online, if you're still on PS3 then it's still free according to the Sony chart.
Plus as per a thread about it you can still netflix & iplayer etc on the PS4 without PS+ but you have to pay to get that on xbox. I still think the anger towards Sony is undeserved, they serve the players alot more than MS do.
Guess it's differing times of play between us then as I can only remember yesterday's one affecting me playing but can remember all the times that live went down. Last night I played GTA Vice City and solo rocket league which was actually quite abit of fun so didn't lose out too much.
They probably do aim for the 99.999% and by your own admission get pretty close.
I've got to be honest, you do sound a bit childish moaning about a game playing service that is available over 99% of the time. It's not even a first-world problem. Play offline or do something else.
I've no doubt they could get higher by building in more resilience, but that would involve a higher subscription. Also, does your own broadband have 100% uptime? If not, then you've not really got any grounds for complaint as you're hardly doing everything you can to avoid outages - you should really have 2 separate broadband connections.
I've got to be honest, you do sound a bit childish moaning about a game playing service that is available over 99% of the time. It's not even a first-world problem. Play offline or do something else.
I've no doubt they could get higher by building in more resilience, but that would involve a higher subscription. Also, does your own broadband have 100% uptime? If not, then you've not really got any grounds for complaint as you're hardly doing everything you can to avoid outages - you should really have 2 separate broadband connections.
I have a ps4 and use PSN+ to play online so I do pay.
Not really a childish moan either, I'm a little too old for that, as you rightly say I just did something else.
It's just that working in the industry, I'm a little shocked at a company of this size having so many problems with their online service. In this day and age it really isn't that difficult to build in resilience, with over 100m psn users and quite a few paying £40 a year for the service, that's more than enough money to make sure it doesn't have the issues they've had over the last couple of years, the least of which are the outages, they've also been hacked not once but twice resulting in customer data being stolen. Looking at it professionally, I just don't think it's good enough.
Not really a childish moan either, I'm a little too old for that, as you rightly say I just did something else.
It's just that working in the industry, I'm a little shocked at a company of this size having so many problems with their online service. In this day and age it really isn't that difficult to build in resilience, with over 100m psn users and quite a few paying £40 a year for the service, that's more than enough money to make sure it doesn't have the issues they've had over the last couple of years, the least of which are the outages, they've also been hacked not once but twice resulting in customer data being stolen. Looking at it professionally, I just don't think it's good enough.
Guvernator said:
It's just that working in the industry, I'm a little shocked at a company of this size having so many problems with their online service.
If you really work in the industry, then I'm shocked you're shocked.Maybe let Sony know what they need to do to get it sorted as if they are only achieving above 99% then they clearly need your advice. If they are getting over 99% uptime - that's hardly "so many problems".
I notice you didn't respond to my other points...
BTW - I have no axe to grind as I don't pay/play online.
The Sony service is a bit poor. It now costs more than Xbox Live, like for like. The free games are better on the Xbox and the LIVE is more stable, and seems to be down less. Neither is perfect though. At least having both consoles gives me some resilience against their services being offline!
Guvernator said:
The Playstation network was down again last night, not the end of the world\first world issues etc but I really find it a bit p*ss poor to be honest. I work in the IT industry so know a bit about this stuff, really how hard can it be to make a resilient network? I know companies with a fraction of the resources of Sony who manage to run a world wide comms\server network with none of these issues. Have they not heard of resilience, failover, BC, DR etc?
I don't think Xbox live have nearly as many issues, it really does feel like amateur hour at Sony sometimes. This is about the 5th outage in recent memory IIRC, really not good enough for a company of Sony's size. They need to sack their network\infrastructure guys and hire someone who knows what they are doing. Sony, I am available for a modest fee (and a free lifetimes supply of playstation games.)
At least Sony are updating the network! I don't think Xbox live have nearly as many issues, it really does feel like amateur hour at Sony sometimes. This is about the 5th outage in recent memory IIRC, really not good enough for a company of Sony's size. They need to sack their network\infrastructure guys and hire someone who knows what they are doing. Sony, I am available for a modest fee (and a free lifetimes supply of playstation games.)
Also working in IT myself, any very often responsible for arranging these types out outages with stakeholders, I can assure you they will have done everything possible to minimise the outage. Sometimes you just can't get away without one though (it even happens for banks).
The only thing I feel they could do better is publicise the outage more. Unless it's a attack or major incident then all works, including these outages, should be planed and communicated. Well that's what the industry standard tells us anyway!
Also, as someone stated above, you need to remember this is a global service. So if a 2 hour outage is required then you will aim to do this work, were possible, at the post impacting times. The UK / EU is probably the smallest market so we will get the outages more frequently than say the US.
Also I recommend getting some good single player games for this kind of thing.
Edited by chuntington101 on Wednesday 6th January 07:59
In the time I've had the PS4 and played almost exclusively online, PSN has only been down when I've wanted to play 3 or 4 times over a period of about 18 months. The only time it really bothered me was Christmas last year but, that was caused by a DoS attack I believe. Considering I play almost daily for a number of hours, I'd say that is pretty good going.
Nowadays, I make sure I have a few games I can play offline if PSN is down so, it's no big deal.
Nowadays, I make sure I have a few games I can play offline if PSN is down so, it's no big deal.
I'm not sure it was a planned outage though, certainly everything I've read on the net so far indicates it wasn't. I'd be more understanding if it was, the fact that Sony are often terrible at communicating what's going on doesn't help. If it is a planned outage then let people know, it's easy enough to send a notification out over the psn network a few days before hand, it has a whole notification app for it.
If it was a planned outage and it's gone on longer than was planned then try to let people know via your website or twitter and at least give an ETA for a fix or next update, that's just good practice IMO, just stating we have "ongoing issues" is a bit crap really.
Some of the posts on this thread are a bit weird though, complain to Sony or stop using it, errr OK. Thousands of people have already complained and it hasn't done any good and if I stop using PSN, I might as well throw my PS4 away.
Northern Monkey, I didn't respond to your other point because it was a bizarre notion, my broadband connection is fine. I think I've had one outage in 18 months which was cured by a router reboot so not sure why I would need to get a second connection. If my provider had multiple outages or had been hacked twice I'd complain and\or move to another provider, things you can't do really do with psn. Besides this isn't a rant about expecting to be online 100% of the time, I just think that psn has experienced more problems then I'd expect from a tech company of this size over the last 18 months.
If it was a planned outage and it's gone on longer than was planned then try to let people know via your website or twitter and at least give an ETA for a fix or next update, that's just good practice IMO, just stating we have "ongoing issues" is a bit crap really.
Some of the posts on this thread are a bit weird though, complain to Sony or stop using it, errr OK. Thousands of people have already complained and it hasn't done any good and if I stop using PSN, I might as well throw my PS4 away.
Northern Monkey, I didn't respond to your other point because it was a bizarre notion, my broadband connection is fine. I think I've had one outage in 18 months which was cured by a router reboot so not sure why I would need to get a second connection. If my provider had multiple outages or had been hacked twice I'd complain and\or move to another provider, things you can't do really do with psn. Besides this isn't a rant about expecting to be online 100% of the time, I just think that psn has experienced more problems then I'd expect from a tech company of this size over the last 18 months.
Guvernator said:
If it is a planned outage then let people know, it's easy enough to send a notification out over the psn network a few days before hand, it has a whole notification app for it.
Now this part I totally agree with. They seem to use twitter as their primary communication medium but, some people (such as myself) 
Guvernator said:
Point 1I'm not sure it was a planned outage though, certainly everything I've read on the net so far indicates it wasn't. I'd be more understanding if it was, the fact that Sony are often terrible at communicating what's going on doesn't help. If it is a planned outage then let people know, it's easy enough to send a notification out over the psn network a few days before hand, it has a whole notification app for it.
If it was a planned outage and it's gone on longer than was planned then try to let people know via your website or twitter and at least give an ETA for a fix or next update, that's just good practice IMO, just stating we have "ongoing issues" is a bit crap really.
Point 2Some of the posts on this thread are a bit weird though, complain to Sony or stop using it, errr OK. Thousands of people have already complained and it hasn't done any good and if I stop using PSN, I might as well throw my PS4 away.
1. I think the one in early Jan was, but it went on for far longer than anticipated. There was a post I remember (can't dig it out as at work) that it would be down for two hours from 17:30GMT to 19:30GMT but it went on till about 02:00 the next morning. Agree with you on the lack of communication it was annoying. If it was a planned outage and it's gone on longer than was planned then try to let people know via your website or twitter and at least give an ETA for a fix or next update, that's just good practice IMO, just stating we have "ongoing issues" is a bit crap really.
Point 2Some of the posts on this thread are a bit weird though, complain to Sony or stop using it, errr OK. Thousands of people have already complained and it hasn't done any good and if I stop using PSN, I might as well throw my PS4 away.
2. They have, everyone gets an extra month free of PS+ subscription because 8 1/2hours of being offline is against some people's human rights.
For me it's not Sony who should be suffering, every network need maintenance. For me it's the games companies who should be enduring the wrath, why can I not play the latest triple A title offline? It cost me £45 for this and I can only play it when I'm online, how about they build games for all players?!
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