1. PSN Gets Hacked, Outage For 24 Days
Easily the most embarrassingly stupid screw-up of the seventh generation was the PSN service outage of April-May 2011, lasting a whopping 24 days, in which time PSN could not be accessed, and gamers were collectively at once tearing their hair out in frustration and laughing maniacally at Sony for allowing something so integral to their system's infrastructure to be compromised. To many, the anger was less at the time of the outage but that the 77 million accounts had all had data stolen, making it one of the largest security breaches in history, and a massive PR problem for Sony. Hilariously, even once the worst seemed to be over, an exploit was discovered which allowed users to reset any other user's password via a Sony website, and so that also had to be shut down. Ultimately, Sony paid a hefty price of $171 million in losses for the outage, and again, this is a lesson in hubris and preparedness. Though one can't always prepare for the most daring hackers, a 24-day outage is absolutely ridiculous, and a reminder of how reliant we are on these online infrastructures in today's gaming landscape. Are there any other epic cock-ups I missed? Tell me in the comments!