Shawn Layden took over from Jack Tretton as President & CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) in 2014, now known as Sony Interactive Entertainment America (SIEA).
Layden had been moving inside Sony's corporate structure since 1987, which means that he witnessed the very birth of the extraordinarily successful PlayStation console brand. However, during one of PlayStation's lowest points in all these years, the so-called PlayStation Network outage, Layden was really close to the fire - still appointed as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of PlayStation Network Entertainment.
Looking back to that event, when the PlayStation Network was inaccessible for 23 consecutive days and the personal data of 77 million accounts were compromised, he said in an interview with Polygon that it was a "baptism by fire" of sorts which however strengthened the PlayStation Network going forward.
It took years off my life. I remember the day.
If it had to happen to us, I'm glad it happened then. We've learned so much from that experience.
We were in as good a position as we could be at the time with what was, at the time, state of the art. But we did get hit and we have taken our capabilities in that area to the highest degree possible. So no one is complacent or, or ignorant about the dangers and the challenges that are out there but I think we are in a much better place today.
We have had our baptism by fire.
Admittedly, nothing like that ever happened again even though last week Sony announced that the PSN reached the impressive threshold of 70M monthly active users (MAU). That said, Xbox Live is still considered superior in many ways, from reliability to speed, as proven by an IHS report a while ago. As a PlayStation 4 owner since the console's launch day, the usual download speed is undoubtedly one of PSN's weakest points when compared to other platforms; hopefully, Sony will announce some improvements to its PlayStation Network infrastructure at E3 2017.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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