PlayStation Network Return "Uncertain", May Not be 100% Back Until May 31

"The PlayStation Network has been down for a while now. We've been warned that it may be down for a little while longer. Now Sony says it could be weeks still before the PSN is fully operational.

Sony's Shigenori Yoshida has told Bloomberg that his company's deadline for the full return of all PlayStation Network services is May 31. The PSN went down on April 20. That's nearly six weeks of downtime if it takes that long for the entire network to be restored to full operation.

While you'd assume/hope that signing into the network and playing games online are the first things to come back up, and in a much quicker timeframe than May 31, Yoshida says that Sony is "uncertain" when the PSN will actually get back up and running." Luke Plunkett @ Kotaku.com

Week 14 - Business Marketing

Greg Peters, VP of product development at Netflix had announced back in Fall 2009 some great news for PS3 owners. The availability to instantly watch movies and TV episodes on your TV via the Playstation 3. Sony PS3 joined the ever growing list of Netflix ready devices that allows streaming of movies and TV shows whenever you want, as much as you want, all included in an unlimited Netflix subscription. The PS3 is a great Blu-ray and gaming platform that got even better when these two ventures collided their powers together. While still delivering a continuous improvement into their architecture which imporves the Netflix experience by adding more and more features over time. The Netflix application has some exclusive features for the PS3:

• 1080p resolution support 
• 5.1 audio support    
• Multiple language support     
• Subtitle/closed caption support

this all shows a great cooperative agreement between these two business firms creating a strategic alliance (strategic partnership).

PlayStation Network Down

On April 20, 2011, there was an outage on the Playstation Network. The updates on the PSN Service Outage on the Playstation Blog on April 20th was posted by Patrick Seybold, Sr. Director, Corporate Communications & Social Media stated that "We’re aware certain functions of PlayStation Network are down. We will report back here as soon as we can with more information. Thank you for your patience."

Now over two weeks now and the Playstation Network still hasn't resumed to normal services. On Tuesday, April 26 they shared that some information that was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into the network.

"Once again, we’d like to apologize to the many users who were inconvenienced and worried abut this situation.
We want to state this again given the increase in speculation about credit card information being used fraudulently. One report indicated that a group tried to sell millions of credit card numbers back to Sony. To my knowledge there is no truth to this report of a list, or that Sony was offered an opportunity to purchase the list.
We continue to work with law enforcement and forensic experts to identify the criminals behind the attack. Once again, we apologize for causing users concern over this matter." Patrick Seybold May 02, 2011 @ Playstion.Blog

Week 13 - Segmenting and Targeting Markets

Most cultural distinctions, different needs and demands of individuals, and diversities in customers’ buying behaviors really require market segmentation of companies to satisfy their customers effectively. The market can be divided in geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioral segmentation variables and the company can focus on target segments which it wants to attract.

According to Sony, the main geographic segments of the PlayStation 3 consist of the Northern America market, the Japanese market and the European market. When Sony released their first video game console PlayStation in 1994, the company’s main focus was on the marketplace from 12- to 17-year-old boys. But nowadays, Sony’s demographic segmentation divides the market of the PS3 in male and female, old and young players and expands its business vastly to a bigger mainstream of entertainment.
Since the PS3 offers a multi selection of video games which includes something for everybody. There’s not merely one game to ultimately define the PS3 platform, but rather different must-have games for different segments of consumers.