Sony 
is asking an unspecified number of PlayStation Network customers to change their passwords after finding “irregular activity” in a routine scan of the system.
The company did not disclose how many users were affected, nor what the exact nature of the activity was.
There’s 
already a ton of critical praise for Journey, the soothing — almost meditative — PSN adventure title. But the latest kudo carries a bit more weight.
Austin Wintory has been nominated for a Grammy for his work on the game’s soundtrack. This marks the first time a video game has been nominated for a Grammy.
Journey, 
the soothing, meditative downloadable title that has critics swooning, is proving just as popular with players.
Sony announced Thursday the game has become the fastest-selling title in the history of the PlayStation Network and PlayStation Store.
When Sony 
announced that customer data from its PlayStation Network was accessed by hackers, gamers and the media were furious. So why did Valve seem to get a pass under similar circumstances?
Like a lot of people in the gaming world, I got an interesting email from Gabe Newell last week.
The Steam hacking incident of last November, he said, was worse than they initially thought it was. And while there still was no direct evidence that credit card information had been accessed, a backup file containing that information (albeit encrypted) was obtained by the person or persons who had broken into the system.
Just as Sony was 
starting to put the consumer badwill of this year’s hacking fiasco behind it, it goes and slips a change into the terms of service for the PlayStation Network. In this opinion piece, Chris Morris takes a look.
Sometimes you have to wonder if Sony even bothers to run things by its public relations department before taking action.
Just as the company was starting to put the consumer badwill of this year’s hacking fiasco behind it, it goes and slips a change into the terms of service for the PlayStation Network – and the masses began to howl once more.
If you’re hoping to launch 
a class-action lawsuit against Sony, you might want to read the new terms of service of the PlayStation Network really closely before agreeing to them.
Sony has amended the user agreement it requires gamers to digitally sign off on before they can access the online functionality of the PS3 — and it’s got a whopper of a change intended to dissuade players from litigating.
[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.
The ever-creeping deadline to get the 
PlayStation Network fully operational has crept a little further out – but the company says it’s now confident everything will be up and running by the end of the week.
Sony, in a blog posting, said Monday that it expects to have its online service fully operational by the end of the week. That’s a few days later than the previous vow to have it up and running by the end of the day – and more than a week later than it told developer partners it hoped to have the PlayStation Store operational again.
Barring any additional problems, Sony 
plans to bring the PlayStation Store back online next Tuesday, May 24, according to a memo sent to the console’s publishing partners.
The company has sent a tentative publishing schedule to partners detailing when their games, expansions and other releases will become available to players. In the memo, obtained by Gamasutra, Sony unveils plans to do two content pushes per week for the next two weeks to catch up with the backlog of content.
Sony has acknowledged another security hole 
in its PlayStation unit – and while it might not be as catastrophic as the recent security breach, it’s bound to be an embarrassment for the company – and another hurdle officials have to overcome as they work to regain consumers’ trust.
The company has blocked user logins on all PlayStation Websites after being informed of an exploit (or workaround) that could let unauthorized people take control of user accounts using the very same information that was stolen from Sony roughly four weeks ago.
Chris Morris: Journalist 