Sony Corporation (ADR) (Public, NYSE:SNE) will finally be sending a high-level executive to testify before the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade on the three week outage of PSN and Sony’s slowness in informing its customers on the compromising of personal and credit card data.
Ken Johnson, an aide to subcommittee chairwoman Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), told The Atlantic Magazine that Tim Schaff, president of Sony Network Entertainment, would testify before the subcommittee next week:
“While Chairman Bono Mack remains critical of Sony’s initial handling of the data breaches, she also is appreciative that the company has now agreed to testify. The Chairman firmly believes that the lessons learned from…the Sony…experiences can be instructive and guide us as we develop comprehensive data protection legislation. We expect to introduce that legislation, which will provide new safeguards for American consumers, in the next few weeks.”
Previously, Sony’s Kaz Hirai had only sent his testimony in a letter to the Committee.
In other Sony News: PS4 Not In Development
A few days after Sony CFO Masaru Kato stated that the PlayStation 4 was in development, the Sony brass has refuted that claim through their public relations.
A Sony spokesperson stated Mr Kato’s comments were “taken out of context”, and that Kato actually meant their development of the NGP (now evidenced to be called the PlayStation Vita). This is supposed to be Sony’s response to Project Cafe, albeit it would be more of a competitor to the Nintendo 3DS. Sony’s line is that the Vita would be their hot new device to grab attention from the new Nintendo console.
Of course, it’s safe to say that Sony probably is developing the PS4 – just as Microsoft has already begun work on the Xbox 720 – but they’re not prepared to release any information on it now.
Jonah Falcon is a blogger for TMRzoo and GameStooge.com and covers all gaming consoles and platforms including Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft XBOX 360, Nintendo Wii, Sony PSP and computer games designed for Mac OS, Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems. Jonah provides his readers with reviews, previews, release dates and up to date gaming industry news, trailers and rumors.
