The Benefits of Last Year’s PlayStation Network Hack

The Benefits of Last Year’s PlayStation Network Hack:
It was pointed out at last week’s Mobile Gaming conference in San Francisco that in some countries, credit cards just aren’t a part of the culture.  Instead, gamers head out to game and convenience stores in order to secure cards that renew their Xbox Live gold accounts or to buy online credit.
Eurogamer recently examined how last year’s PlayStation Network hack created a credit-card fearing network of PlayStation users even in a credit card-drive country like the United States.  I’ll be the first to admit – I am American, and I have indeed tried to use my credit card to pay for purchases under $2…sign me up for Credit Card Users Anonymous or whatever the equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous is.

EA executive Peter Moore states that even a year later:

A lot of our consumers don’t own credit cards.  A lot of our consumers are still afraid of what happened to the PlayStation Network when 77 million accounts were accessed by Anonymous in 2011.  A lot of our consumers prefer to go into retail to buy those Xbox Live or PlayStation Network cards.

Moore sees this transition beneficial in some respects, since GameStop has millions of hardcore gamers coming through its doors, creating a “marketing opportunity” for PlayStation.  He sees retailers “[playing] a very strong role in [PlayStation’s] business” going forward, particularly as retailers transform from a business of selling mostly physical products to expanding upon their digital media sales.

In addition to augmenting marketing and sales opportunities for retailers, last year’s security breach actually served PlayStation in a beneficial way, according to EEDAR’s Vice President Jesse Divnich.  After Sony introduced its “Welcome Back” program (offering free game downloads and other perks to PlayStation users), the PlayStation Network saw an influx of PlayStation owners returning to their consoles:

A few months after the service went back online, Sony went as far as to claim that the breach had actually woken up as many as three million “dormant” account holders and brought more gamers to the system.

“Without a doubt,” insists Divnich.  “Sony’s Welcome Back program woke up dormant users.”  (Though Divnich believes Sony’s numbers are a bit skewed, since many dormant users likely logged into their accounts merely to check on their account info, rather than to start playing/buying again.  He does think, however, that about 10% of users returned in order to renew their game-playing habits.)