PSN hack "woke up dormant customers"

The PlayStation Network security breach might have compromised the personal details of millions of its customers but Sony is looking on the bright side, stating that it's been great for business.

Speaking to TechRadar, Sony exec Soichiro Saida explained that the hack served to bring previously inactive users back online, rather than driving away more engaged customers.

"Our outage has woken up our dormant customers, we have improved the platform, the content, how you can access your content," he said.

"We have increased the revenue of games by 14 per cent. We have acquired 800,000 active users for Music Unlimited, five per cent revenue for Video Unlimited and we now have three million accounts for this service.

"We created the welcome back package, which is one of the reasons for the upsurge in activity on the site."

Saida reiterated that the platform holder has instituted a raft of new security measures since the hack back in April and will continue to educate its users about keeping their details safe.

"We have put various security issues in place, moved the data centre, automated log-in can now be blocked, we have monitoring system so we can detect it much more sooner," Saida explained.

"We also have the insurance scheme to protect those customers. We also notify customers if the password strength is not enough.

"Sony has been attacked but we have been upfront and honest and informed the world about what has happened," he continued.

"Network companies get hacked all the time - but do they make a noise about it? This is happening all of the time, it happened to us and it is about educating the consumers, making sure that they have their ID protected."

Last month, Sony CEO Howard Stringer revealed that PSN had picked up three million new accounts since the breach was resolved.