All work and no Playstation Network makes Jimmy a dull boy...

This network outage is not cool. Nobody's sure if their trophies or themes will survive, and there is general anarchy while PSN central has refused to peep on the matter in the last 12 hours, but that isn't what is really bugging the crap out of me now...

Now I've been a Playstation guy from day one almost, and if I want to go to my cabinet, dig out Jumping Flash and play it on my good ol' grey Playstation 1 I can. No questions asked.. just "bommmmm boooooom...." and I am off. Happy as can be. The trouble I am having now is I have a perfectly fine console that cost $499 and no connection to PSN. "No problem!", I declare, "I can still play my games offline!" Not so. Demon Souls and a few others would not even boot to the menu.

Now what the heck happens when PS5 comes out and SCEA-J decides to take their PS3 servers off line? Right now it seems like the entire investment gets flushed down the damn toilet. Even if they decide to run a charity for elderly consoles and keep these servers working... there is no guarantee that third parties, like Atlus (I love you guys I really do!) for instance, will continue to support the games they publish, or that Sony won't tie PS3 network access to PS4 or 5 ownership or some other wallet dig.

Now I am sure that patches could be devised for these games to make them able to run in an offline mode, or perhaps some forward thinking Sony tech left breadcrumbs in the firmware for a dummy PSN server to run from the PS3, sending fake signals to the games, but does this sound like something they would do? Ever since the dubious "decision" to ditch backward-compatibility in the first years of a new console's lifespan I haven't trusted them too much, and any chance to get us to pay out again for what we already own is just too tempting a prospect for these guys. Can anyone really say otherwise without taking out their fanboy card and stapling it to their forehead?