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Capcom might lose millions in PSN outage

Senior VP Christian Svensson says offline PS3 service is costing it funds to bring new games to market.

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Sony has without question taken it on the chin in the wake of a security breach that brought the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services offline, as well as pulled Sony Online Entertainment's stable of games offline. However, third-party publishers are also suffering from the lack of a storefront through which to sell their online goods.

Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 is just one title PS3 gamers can't buy right now.
Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 is just one title PS3 gamers can't buy right now.

Capcom, for one, could see its losses creep into seven-digit territory, according to a comment by senior vice president Christian Svensson in a post to the Capcom-Unity blog. When asked about the PSN outage by a commenter, Svensson said that beyond his personal frustration as a gamer, Capcom is experiencing substantial economic fallout as well.

"I'm frustrated and upset by it for a number of reasons," he said. "As a consumer, I also play games online on PS3, which I can't do…and likely my personal information is also compromised. Secondly I like to buy things in the PlayStation store and that I can't do right now."

"On a related note, as an executive responsible for running a business, the resulting outage obviously costing us hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in revenue that were planned for within our budget," he continued. "These are funds we rely on to bring new games to market for our fans."

"In short, the hackers appear to be trying to 'punish' Sony for some perceived injustice, and they've been effective in that I suppose," he concluded. "But they're also punishing millions of other consumers and businesses which makes it impossible to be sympathetic to their 'cause.'"

Capcom's digital revenues are being impacted through full-game and add-on content sales. Of the former, the publisher launched Bionic Commando Rearmed 2 in early February. The publisher is also missing out on DLC sales for games such as Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and Dead Rising 2.

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