Stories by Matt Peckham

Attempting to deflect criticism of its upcoming privacy policy changes, Google is on the defensive.

Rioters in London apparently set Sony's Enfield-based DADC (Digital Audio Disc Corporation) facility ablaze last night, reducing the massive disc distribution center to flames and smoke. The massive multi-story, 20,000 square meter building would have likely contained stock tied to multiple mediums, ranging from music labels to video games to movies and more.

The PlayStation Network wasn't hacked so much as threatened yesterday when a password exploit accessible through its PSN web page login page came to light, claims Sony.

Now that the PlayStation Network’s back, Sony’s trotting out something it's calling a "PlayStation Network and Qriocity Customer Appreciation Program," prompting cries of "too much" or "too little" in certain press channels.

Not quite out of the frying pan, but into the fire anyway: Sony just acknowledged another network breach related to the first one.

Sony Japan’s explanation for the PSN’s takedown yesterday didn’t tell us much, but -- nearly a week and a half on -- at least the company apologized. Sony’s deputy president Kazuo Hirai took the stage, bent forward as if to touch his toes in a deep and held bow, then apologized “for the great anxiety and inconvenience” caused by the ongoing PSN and Qriocity outages.

The fleeting hour I was able to devote to Portal 2 last night, dashing through the remainder of its suddenly capacious middle chapters, proved a little better than the dull, shallow preliminary five.

Tired of all the will-they, won't-they iPhone 5 stories? Or are you secretly kind of jubilant each time they pronounce the iPhone-next's arrival "later than expected"? I'm talking about those of you who picked up a Verizon iPhone 4 in February (okay, me) assuming it'd be obsolete a few months later.

Onward Angry Birds Rio, the exotic new adventures of a bunch of irate avians that just flew past 10 million downloads. If they had legs, they'd probably be dancing on the sand.

The numbers are humbling: Three studios (of five) terminated, 205 jobs simply gone. That's the damage -- substantial by any measure -- at Sony Online Entertainment, Sony's flagship online games development brand.

It looks like Kinect's officially a record-setter, grabbing Guinness' attention long enough to snag the title 'fastest selling consumer electronics device'. According to Microsoft, their controller-free Xbox 360 motion-sensing camera has sold a whopping 10 million units since it launched in early November last year.

It looks like Nintendo's 3DS isn't having trouble finding buyers in Japan. According to Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun (via Andriasang) gamers essentially exhausted Nintendo's initial shipment of 400,000 units. The 3DS launched in Japan Saturday to reports of lines and pre-order sellouts.

Nintendo's bid to put glasses-free 3D into the anxious hands of the masses just got underway in Japan. The company's 3DS -- sequel to the DS and DSi, and employing a new 3.53-inch widescreen that uses parallax barrier tech to create the illusion of three-dimensional imagery -- launched Saturday in the Land of the Rising Sun to long lines, claims of emptied stores, and Twitter tales of 3D-induced headaches.

Sony popped the lid on the industry's worst kept secret this afternoon, trotting out its Xperia Play Android phone at Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona, Spain. You probably know all there is to say about the device at this point, except for one little thing.

From Battle.net chat channels to master leagues, stalemate detection, and a new 'extreme' graphics option, the latest StarCraft II patch is here and it's a doozy.