Sony Ericsson has announced that the Sony Qriocity streaming video service will be landing on select smartphones from the company's range as of August 1, with a choice of content from NBC, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros. and more. Arriving first on the XPERIA mini and mini pro, the Qriocity video app will allow for both rentals and purchases of titles.
The gang at Sony has had a rough time the last few months, but the users of the Sony PSN and Qriocity music service have had the rougher time with much of their personal information making it into the wild thanks to the massive hack that Sony was victim to. Sony is trying to woo users back to the PSN and its unlimited music service Qriocity with free offers and many will gladly go back. The Qriocity network was down longer than the PSN.
Sony has detailed its Welcome Back program to UK users of the PlayStation Network, sending out emails to subscribers explaining what fraud protection and other aspects they'll receive. The European scheme follows the US offering, consisting of both free access to services, some downloadable games and a year's subscription to an anti-fraud service.
Sony is still digging its way from under the aftermath of the breach of its PlayStation network. Much of the PSN is back online in most countries though some are still without service. Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Corp announced today that the full restoration of Qriocity service will be made today in all territories where the service operates except one. That one territory that the service will remain unavailable in is Japan.
Sony will miss its May 31 self-imposed deadline for full restoration of the PlayStation Network, instead promising to have all services in the Americas, Europe/PAL territories and Asia - excluding Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea - active once more by the end of the week. The embarrassing, ongoing delay in Sony's home country is apparently due to more stringent information security mandates from the Japanese government; Sony has declined to comment on delays in other parts of Asia.
Sony's restoration of the PlayStation Network continues, with Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand all set to get their online gaming and Qriocity streaming media back from tomorrow, Friday May 28. The functionality will include online play for the PS3 and PSP, PlayStation Home, Friend List services and the network functionality for the Torne digital TV tuner.
It's not just North America getting some PlayStation Network and Qriocity service this weekend. Sony has taken to Twitter to confirm that phase one of the restoration is now rolling out in the UK, Ireland and the Middle East, as the company brings the reinforced servers back online.
After weeks of downtime, governmental scrutiny and untold user fury, Sony has finally begun to restore PlayStation Network and Qriocity streaming media services. It's not been an easy journey, either: it wasn't just server failure that took the PSN offline, but a security breach that saw millions of consumer records snatched out from under Sony's nose. With only the slightest publicly-released information to go on, systems experts have looked on in horror as Sony took a forced deep-dive through server strata, uncovering the flaws - in its data centers and its ego - that allowed the hack to take place. Still, Sony may find that restoring the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services were the easy part - rebuilding its ailing reputation may be far trickier.
![PlayStation Network is back online [Video]](https://www.slashgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/psn_back_online-646x420.jpg)
Sony has confirmed that the PlayStation Network is coming back online, with a mandatory system software update (v3.61) for PS3 consoles before they can rejoin the PSN. The phased update has now spread across North American and Europe, though there may be some delay as servers repopulate. Plus, Sony's Kazuo Hirai has shared a video message about the restoration, which you can see after the cut.
Sony has admitted that it will like be the end of the week before the PlayStation Network will be online again, further frustrating impatient gamers. According to Sony's Patrick Seybold, senior director of corporate comms. and social media, "it will likely be at least a few more days" before the systems are back, having been hacked in late April.
Sony had promised a phased return of their PlayStation Network and Qriocity services, with portions of the systems back online by last week. But, after their Sony Online Entertainment portal also got hacked along with newly discovered security issues and a threat of another possible attack this past weekend, all their networks remain offline as of today.
By now, Sony had hoped to have PlayStation Network users back online, gaming away merrily to make up for all that lost time. Unfortunately neither the PSN nor Qriocity media streaming services are functioning yet; according to Sony, they're "still working to confirm the security of the network infrastructure, as well as working with a variety of outside entities to confirm with them of the security of the system." In short: you'll have to wait some more.