Madden 12 won’t be 
the only football being played on the PlayStation 3 this fall.
Sony and DirectTV have teamed up to bring the satellite company’s hit NFL Sunday Ticket service to the game console, marking the first time people who don’t subscribe to DirecTV will be able to get access to the subscription service.
DirectTV’s Sunday Ticket is 
adding something new to its playbook.
The company and Sony have partnered to bring the popular NFL subscription service to the PlayStation 3 – letting subscribers watch the game through their console and giving people who don’t subscribe to the satellite company the chance to subscribe without having to hook a dish to their roof.
As Sony cuts the price 
of the PlayStation 3 for the first time in two years, Gamasutra editor-at-large Chris Morris looks at the ramifications the move might have on Xbox 360 and Wii.
So the PlayStation 3 price cut we all suspected was coming at some point this year has finally been announced, and immediately implemented to boot. Now things are going to get interesting.
Sony’s $50 reduction, positioned as the exclamation point to their Gamescom press conference, will have reverberations throughout the industry over the next couple of months. Let’s take a look at some of the ripple effects.
The 2011 holiday 
price wars have begun.
During the Gamescom event in Germany on Tuesday, Sony cut the global price of the PlayStation 3 from $299 to $249, positioning the company for a tremendous holiday season. The price drop is effective immediately.
[In this interview with Gamasutra editor at large 
Chris Morris, SCEA CEO Jack Tretton talks candidly about April’s PSN security breach and outage, and how low-priced mobile titles aren’t necessarily “training people to pay $5 for games.”]
While Sony would probably argue otherwise, the rest of the world tends to agree that the company’s public handling of April’s data intrusion was a textbook example of PR fumbling. After waiting what many consider to be too long to address the problem, the company finally apologized, but the sentiment seemed rehearsed — and less than sincere to many.
But when Jack Tretton stepped on stage at this year’s pre-E3 press conference and addressed the issue for the first time, he did so without a script or teleprompter, choosing instead to speak from the heart.
Just days after Sony brought its PlayStation 
Network back to life after one of the biggest online security breaches in history, the company may have another problem on its hands.
Sony has blocked user logins on all PlayStation Websites after reports began to circulate on gaming sites and on hacker message boards about an exploit — essentially, a hole or oversight in the system’s security that hackers can use to gain access — that could allow third-parties to take control of user accounts.
As the PlayStation Network outage 
inches closer to the one-month mark, the extended downtime is testing more than just the patience of some players.
It’s testing their loyalty.
The data breach into the PlayStation 
Network continues to worsen.
Sony announced Monday it had discovered another 24.6 million accounts had been hacked, this time in the company’s PC online gaming division. The intrusion is on top of the 77 million accounts that Sony has previously acknowledged were breached.
With the shock wearing off after yesterday’s announcement 
about the scope and magnitude of the hacker attack on the PlayStation Network, Sony is now having to deal with the ugly public relations fallout.
Gardner analyst Avivah Litan says the incident is the largest theft of personal information to ever occur. That has spurred politicians in two countries to demand answers. And, as expected, the first of what will likely be several lawsuits has already been filed.
Sony’s acknowledgement that hackers have compromised 
its PlayStation Network put 70 million subscribers on alert — and left a lot of people with a lot of questions.
The security breach has many people worried about identity theft and, if they had made a digital purchase on the console, whether their credit card information is safe. Finding the answers can be a challenge, so here’s what you need to know about what the attack means for you.
Chris Morris: Journalist 