In a statement this morning Sony have given an estimate of the costs of the PSN Hack. The statement is an update on their financial forecasts that they have produced ahead of their more extensive financial results that we are expecting later this week.
Naturally they do not refer to the episode as a hack, calling it “the unauthorised network access”. They state that their estimate of the currently known costs resulting from the cyber attack are Â¥14 billion Â¥18 billion. In monetary terms you are more likely to understand that is £106m or $172m £137m or $221m.
Understandably of far larger impact to their financial situation is the Great East Japan Earthquake and its after-effects. For the year to 31st March 2011 Sony say they expect it to have reduced their operating income by ¥17bn (£129m, $208m).
The impact of the earthquake and tsunami to Sony’s bottom line will of course be much greater during their current financial year as it happened so close to the end of their last. For the year ending 31st March 2012 they anticipate a reduction of approximately Â¥150bn (£1.14bn, $1.84).
Source: Sony
Currency conversion rates used: £1 = ¥131.525 and $1 = ¥81.585. (BBC Market Data)
Update: Checking the data again following today’s investor call the estimated cost figure for the impact of the PSN hack has been revised to Â¥14bn from the Â¥18bn we reported earlier. The numbers in the text above have been changed to reflect that.
jayjay119
That’s a lot of money, even for Sony to lose. Hope they’ll be ok, Companies are flopping all over the place lately and Sony haven’t and probably won’t have had the best of times lately!
Ben
They are almost too big to fail these days, other areas of the company should be able to make up the costs.
MrTwP
it’s cool, they make that money on their awesome overprice laptops
Squalje
Their TVs fetch a fair penny too
Amphlett
You get what you pay for.
rht992
or in this case what someone else has used your credit card to pay for
GTRsannin
Can i just say something here if somebody buys something with your credit card now that is pretty much on you at this point everybody has had more than enough time to close down their accounts and open new ones if you haven’t yet then i don’t know what is going on in your head and i mean everybody with this
Juelz345
@GTRsannin
Well that’s a very general statment to make.
I have a friend who PS3 died like a month before the hack, and up until yesterday he had no idea about the network being down. He’s more of an xbox player and doesn’t frequent video game sites. And what about Parents who put their card info on their kid’s PS3? They might have no idea?
There are plenty of situations where people wouldn’t know, and in any case it wouldn’t be the consumers fault. It’s the person that lost the information and the person who stole the information that are to blame.
GTRsannin
If you put your CC detail in your kids account then you have a huge problem on that side all ready and people who play video games they should be at least interested enough to visit sites especially since there is a good site like PS blog and wouldn’t they start wondering why the PSN is down if they can’t login and they would go searching for info why. I really wouldn’t wan’t to use the word your own stupidity but i guess i have to in this situation
Roynaldo
It was on national news for weeks. Im not much of a news watcher and even i saw it a handful of times.
Anyhoo… not sure about the visiting sites thing. Thats very much a choice and not something I would expect anyone to do. I have pletny of gamer friends who dont bother with sites at all. They know enough about games to know what they like when jumping into a shop to see what’s new.
GTRsannin
Yeah this thing was made in to such a huge thing that they even reported it in the normal news so if you didn’t know about this you must not have been on this planet at the time.
My point was that if you can’t connect to the PSN you usually go investigate even if you don’t normally go to gaming websites and so on
Reality Check
[Dare i say this or even think this] – Lets hope SONY has a better month next month without any bad things happening to them + Come on hackers & haters go and play your Xbox 360’s, there must be something to play on it LoL
Juelz345
worst.joke.ever.
Smallville2106
Holy pickles. Hope all that doesn’t effect them and their plans too much.
cubehouse
I guess the overall cost to developers and publishers is significantly greater.
Sad Panda
They’ll just release a silver PS3 slim and recover it by Christmas.
Uhyve
And now, Sony Music Greece gets hit:
http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/05/23/0237224/Sony-Music-Greece-Falls-To-Hackers
Even more user data taken.
skibadee
nice they will get a free year of id tracking as well feel nice & safe.
Bladesteel
Soooo. 106m £ divided by 77m accounts. Gives about 1.3£ lost for each account. Sorry but something doesn’t make sense to me, are those numbers perhaps for japan only or something like that?
KwietStorm
You just averaged it out yourself. It should make sense.
Bladesteel
But the amount sounds much to small to me. Shouldn’t that cover:
– Identity protection for those that take it
– Lost sales during the downtime
– Lost sales after the downtime, because some people will be wary of supplying card details.
– Cost of the welcome back package
– Damage to the Sony brand
– Cost of increasing security
– Cost of investigating the breach
I can’t imagine all that would add up to only 1.3£ so I’m sitting here with a feeling that something is left out of the numbers.
The Lone Steven
That is one big hole in their wallets. I hope that they can recover the lost profits. It would be terrible if they had to file for bankrupcy due to the hacks. I think they will be able to recover from it within the next 7-19 months.
AG2297
Sony are set to make a loss of $3.2 Billion this year so this £106 Million is hardly going to make them bankrupt.
KwietStorm
I’m quite confused at why people anywhere are even bringing up the b word. It’s not nearly that serious.
3shirts
bastard?
Deathbrin
“(£1.14bn, $1.84)” – think you should add “bn” to that too like you did with m there.