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TOKYO (Reuters) – Sony said it would uphold whatever services on its PlayStation Network this hebdomad and substance incentives to customers to essay to prevent them turning to competitors after the theft of personal aggregation belonging to 78 meg individual accounts.

Top Sony executives apologized for the massive accumulation severance at a programme word in Tokyo on Sunday, the prototypal public comments from senior management on the crisis.

"We apologize deeply for feat enthusiastic discomfort and pain to our users," Kazuo Hirai, Sony's sort 2 and the frontrunner to follow CEO Howard Stringer, said gesture deeply three nowadays during a long programme conference. Stringer was not at the event.

Many PlayStation users around the concern had been furious by the fact that the prototypal warning of digit of the maximal Internet section break-ins ever came a hebdomad after Sony perceived a difficulty with the meshwork on Apr 19.

The warning that individual assign bill aggregation might hit been taken also came just hours after Sony undraped its prototypal paper computers at an circumstance where executives prefabricated no name of the PlayStation breach.

Sunday's programme sparked thousands of comments on the authorised PlayStation follower page on Facebook, whatever of them from users who said they would alter to Microsoft's Xbox Live games network.

Sony said it would substance whatever liberated content, including 30 life of liberated body to a premium assist to existing users and in whatever regions clear assign bill restoration fees.

It said rectification would exclusive be paid if users suffered damage. Sony did not enlarge eliminate to say there was no grounds that assign bill details had actually been stolen. It has confirmed the theft of obloquy and addresses.

Since the breach, section has been boosted on Sony's machine systems, the consort said, adding that enhanced levels of accumulation protection and coding would be implemented. The U.S. agent Bureau of Investigation had been asked to enquiry the breach, Sony said.

"The negative effect on Sony is likely to be short-term, but the business as a whole module suffer a longer-term impact," said Kazutaka Oshima, chair of Rakuten Investment Management.

"I think it module effect Amazon and another e-commerce businesses. Sony might hit had whatever section problems but I don't think they had a specially bounteous hole."

Peppered with questions most accusations Sony was andante to inform users of the intrusion, a grim-faced Hirai said the consort prototypal desired to know what kind of aggregation had been stolen.

Hirai said he had known most the filtration when he undraped Sony's prototypal paper computers on Apr 26.

"We prefabricated the declaration as soon as we could, which overturned out to be the period after the launch," said Hirai, Sony's chief help president.

The severance could be a major setback for Sony. Although video mettlesome element and code sales hit declined globally, the PlayStation Network is a key start for the electronics firm, which digit analyst estimates brings in around $500 meg in annual revenues.

Hirai said Sony could not still set the effect on earnings, but at this saucer saw no effect on the start timing for its newborn hand-held games device or its tablets.

"This malefactor act against our meshwork had a momentous effect not exclusive on our consumers but our entire industry. These illegal attacks apparently particular the distributed difficulty with cyber-security," Hirai said in a separate statement.

"In addition, the methodicalness has worked around the measure to alter these services back on distinction and are doing so exclusive after we had verified accumulated levels of section crossways our networks."

The incident has sparked jural action and investigations by polity in North USA and Europe, home to almost 90 proportionality of the users of the network, which enables gamers to download code and compete with another members.

Sony shares tumbled 4.5 proportionality on Thursday. Markets were winking on Friday.

It is blurred whether Hirai's account module work users that the meshwork is innocuous and investors that Sony's strategy of exploiting synergies between element and noesis via online services, which he has swollen to allow movies and music, is manageable.

Hirai told the programme word that Sony would move to physique its network-related businesses as a key strategy for the company. Hirai was ordained to the No. 2 position in March after spearheading the utilization of networked businesses.

Sony is the latest Asian consort to become under blast for not disclosing bad programme quickly.

Tokyo Electric Power Co was criticized for how it handled the thermonuclear crisis after the March 11 earthquake. Last year, Toyota Motor Corp was slammed for being inferior than forthright most problems over a massive container recall.

(Additional reporting by Taiga Uranaka, Chikako Mogi and Mari Saito, Editing by Anshuman Daga, Nathan Layne and Dean Yates)

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