Okay, WTF?!  How can the handheld Sony PlayStation Vita miss the big 2011 holiday season when it’s already passed through FCC and was, duh!, already leaked on a UK Blockbuster flyer revealing an October release date.  What the hell PS?!

Reportedly these two facts don’t point to a real reveal before the big holiday season this year as Bloomberg is reporting that Kazuo Hirai says the Vita won’t launch in the US and Europe until the beginning of next year.  Of course, only Japan will be celebrating Christmas and the like with a handheld Vita.  Grrrrr, but then again, maybe it’s a good time for a vacay….

We have no idea why Sony is letting Santa down this year with many many  Vita orders, but looks like some wish lists may need to be revised.  Vita, Japanese vacation.

After almost a month of being down, the Sony PlayStation Network is finally up from the grave and off to a shaky start.

The online gaming service as well as Qriocity and Sony Online Entertainment have returned online in most regions of the US, Europe, Latin America and Australia.

While the nightmare is pretty much over for the most of us, especially the Netflix users that were losing sleep over lack of instant watching, Sony services have not been returned in full across the board.

For others like the Japanese, PSN’s return is being blocked by government bureaucrats who are demanding more info from Sony. While Sony’s official word is that its been working around the clock to re-secure and rebuild its hacked services with added layers of protection, the culprit(s) for the attacks still remains uncaught.

Over the weekend, Bloomberg said it learned that hackers may have used an Amazon EC2 server to coordinate the sophisticated attack on Sony’s PSN, SOE and Qriocity services. As you may recall, Amazon’s cloud was recently in hot water for causing damaging downtime to its clients. Sony and Amazon have both remained mum on Bloomberg’s report.

Right now we just need to shine the light on the fact that we can all waste time once again on gaming and Better Off Ted.

Yep, Sony has now stated that the PlayStation Network will not be back up until May 31st at the earliest.

The company announced on Monday that they are rebuilding the entire system, thanks to the hacking attack three weeks ago.  Looks like no Netflix on the TV for a long, long while.  But, you know what?  It’s spring, guess our white geek butts should really be outside anyway, huh?

Raising this lemonade to the hopeful success of a reinstilled PSN.

Holy crap, what the hell Sony?!  Three weeks after hackers attacked the PlayStation network, the system remains down even with the promise that the PSN would be up “may be a full day or two”.

Of course, we all know that over 100 million accounts were stolen during the attack, but sheesh louise, don’t you guys have the top shelf programmers working for you?!  Okay, okay, we’ll calm down, especially since Sony is seemingly more forthcoming in regards to the 2.2 million credit card numbers that were hijacked during the fiasco.

So, with sad news, we’re here to report that Sony is apparently going to rebuild the entire system from top to bottom to ensure that nothing of this ilk will happen in the future.

What will this whole terrible event end up costing Sony in the end?  Try a lil less than $2 million, customer relations and all.  Chump change, right?

WTF PSN?!!  You know, you told us the network would be back up May 4 and here it is May 5 and we’re all like, “Umm, it’s May 5, right?  Didn’t they say it would be up yesterday?  What the crap?  If Comcast was down this long, there’d be a mob lining up at the corporate doors!”

So, seriously, Sony PlayStation Network, WTF?!  It’s now been more than TWO WEEKS since Sony’s network was shut down due to reported hacking and the company remained silent on the long-awaited day that there were supposed to be back online.

Well, almost silent anyway, they did release a statement to the U.S. House subcommittee that there were dealing with the cyber attacks properly and following four key principles:

Act with care and caution.
Provide relevant information to the public when it has been verified.
Take responsibility for our obligations to our customers.
Work with law enforcement authorities.

I mean, good for you!  But WTF, where was all this care and concern when more than TWO WEEKS have gone by and nada????!!!!!  But really, I’m not upset.  GAH!

While we feel that Netflix should have been back up via the PSN days ago, it looks like Sony’s hacked PlayStation Network is taking their sweet time getting their systems back up.

Sony has promised that the network will be back up sometime this week, more than likely Wednesday, and with it a Welcome Back program that offers users one free content download along with a 30-day membership to PlayStation Plus.

At Tokyo’s conference over the weekend, Sony execs finally offered an official apology and a detailed plan on how they are getting their services back up and running.

“This criminal act against our network had a significant impact not only on our consumers, but our entire industry,” PlayStation boss Kaz Hirai said.

“These illegal attacks obviously highlight the widespread problem with cyber-security. We take the security of our consumers’ information very seriously and are committed to helping our consumers protect their personal data. In addition, the organization has worked around the clock to bring these services back online, and are doing so only after we had verified increased levels of security across our networks.”

“We have learned lessons along the way about the valued relationship with our consumers, and to that end, we will be launching a customer appreciation program for registered consumers as a way of expressing our gratitude for their loyalty during this network downtime, as we work even harder to restore and regain their trust in us and our services.”

The new roll-out of the Welcome Back program is expected this week, with no specific date given as of yet.

With the Sony PlayStation Network being down more than a week now and user’s security information possibly hacked, the PSN has finally contacted their users by email.

PSN users received an email Thursday letting them know that between April 17 and April 19, 2011, “certain PlayStation Network and Qriocity service user account information was compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network.”

In response to this security breach, the network is following the below steps.

1) Temporarily turned off PlayStation Network and Qriocity services;

2) Engaged an outside, recognized security firm to conduct a full
and complete investigation into what happened; and

3) Quickly taken steps to enhance security and strengthen our
network infrastructure by rebuilding our system to provide you
with greater protection of your personal information.

The PSN goes on to thank users for their patience, and asks them to contact the credit reporting agencies to place a “fraud alert” on users accounts to ensure complete safety where credit card info is concerned.

While it’s great that the Network has contacted their users, it seems pretty shabby that it took more than a week to do so….

Okay fine, we admit it, we’re becoming more frazzled by the day that Sony’s PlayStation Network is down and has been, going on what, seven days now?

And there’s no good news.  It looks like we could be without the Network until next week.  We understand they got hacked and personal info and credit card info was probably exposed, but don’t they have the best team of IT wizzes there?

Check out the new Q&A regarding that was recently posted on the PlayStation Blog:

We expect to have some services up and running within a week from [April 26]. However, we want to be very clear that we will only restore operations when we are confident that the network is secure.

If this is true, then by May 3rd we might have some services, but we’re not at all betting on all of them.  It just takes one a-hole to screw it for the rest of us….

By now we all know about possibly the worst kept smartphone secret, the Xperia Play, also known as the PlayStation phone.

Well now it’s officially official and reportedly coming to a US carrier in a matter of weeks, with a suspected projected launch of March 2011.

Featuring a four-inch display, five-megapixel camera, slide-out gaming controls, this very leaked smartphone is pretty much the apple of our eyes.

Exes revealed at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress on Sunday that the Sony Ericsson Android-powered Xperia Play will see a worldwide release come March and if you believe Gearlog, the PS phone will arrive in the States on Verizon Wireless, furthering their new mobile jump after the release of the Apple iPhone.

On Thursday Japanese company Sony revealed that the next generation PlayStation Portable machine will go on sale later this year, offering even better media on the go on a screen double to size of most smartphones.

The NGP will come packed to the gills with motion sensor and GPS location technology so you can tilt and sway the new machine to your heart’s content during game time.

Users will be able to interface with the touch panel in the front and touch pads in the back that will allow them to tap on the NGP to move images.  Of course there is no word as of yet on pricing or release date, but we’ll keep you posted.