PlayStation Network outage: 6 days and counting

Sony is still struggling to get its PlayStation Network back online.

There has been no update since Monday, when the company communicated to users via its Web site that it has no prognosis for when PSN would be back in business.

The PlayStation Network (and Qriocity, Sony's cloud music subscription service that has also been taken down) has more than 70 million users worldwide and allows people to download TV shows and movies and video games to their PlayStation consoles. Both services went down in the middle of last week. Since then the company has said it is rebuilding the network.

Sony has not provided detail on what caused its network to need rebuilding. The company has only vaguely acknowledged an "external intrusion." Some have speculated that Sony shut down the network to prevent widespread pirating of content on its network.

In the meantime, it's not clear if the credit card information of paying subscribers was compromised during the "intrusion" by outsiders, and Sony isn't saying. The company has also yet to explain how it will compensate customers whose subscriptions are rendered useless by the outage.

The timing is also rather unfortunate. Last night Sony unveiled its first two tablets. Like most Sony products they use access to its media networks as a selling point. In the case of these tablets, Qriocity.

Fortunately for Sony, the tablets won't go on sale until this fall, buying the company some time to bring its PSN and Qriocity network back online.