Which leads into our next topic of discussion… Sony holds an explosive E3 event on Monday night, and the onus will be on the company to keep security issues from entering people’s minds with a run of solid and stunning announcements. (Thanks for trying, Sony, but how about offering games people might actually be dying to play, instead of last year’s leftovers?) The PS Network was once again up and running early last week, along with Sony’s Welcome Back plan, a setup that allows users to download four free games from a sparse library of lame offerings.

That was before hackers devoted their efforts to breaking through security that even Sony has admitted was hardly Fort Knox, walked off with more cyber-info than they could carry, and left the Network down for much of April and May. So much for Sony’s free online advantage, right? For a few years, the company’s PlayStation Network ran neck-and-neck with Microsoft’s Xbox Live plan, offering free online play over Microsoft’s pay-for-play system.