14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft's Xbox boss Phil Spencer confirms that the company is sharing knowledge and ideas with Sony and Nintendo in order to prevent the impact of DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks on their various online networks like Xbox Live or PSN.
Online gaming is growing bigger and bigger nowadays and on consoles like the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, or Wii U, this is only available through the platform-specific services like the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, or the Nintendo Network.
Unfortunately, these services are quite susceptible to malicious attacks, as the winter holidays brought extended outages for the PSN or Xbox Live after their servers were attacked by nefarious individuals. Eventually, the services came back to life, but the attacks still managed to upset many people, especially those who got new consoles for Christmas and wanted to update their firmware or download their digital games.
Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo are working together
Xbox boss Phil Spencer confirms to GameInformer that Microsoft is having conversations with Sony and Nintendo in order to prevent DDoS attacks in the future and ensure that such things don't dissuade gamers from going online or using the multiplayer modes in their games.
According to him, he's still upset if the PSN goes down while Xbox Live remains operational, as it's just bad for the gaming industry overall for such an attack to succeed.
"All it does is put the fear and distrust from any gamer that's out there," Spencer says about the attacks and offline periods, "so I look at all of us together as this is our collective opportunity to share what we can about what we're learning and how things are growing. Those conversations happen, which I think is great."
It's unclear just what ideas or knowledge is being shared between the three major console manufacturers, but you can expect at least some more stable online experiences to come out of these conversations.