Kaz Hirai, head of Sony's gaming division, appeared at a Tokyo news conference held to unveil the company's tablet PCs. Hirai expressed condolences and support for victims of the March earthquake and tsunami, talked about the new tablets and how they could download content from the Qriocity online service, but failed to mention the problems with Qriocity and the PlayStation Network. He left the stage without taking questions, as originally scheduled.(Read more: )

About 12 hours later, Sony on the hack and confirmed that personal information was stolen. The information included names and addresses for registered PlayStation Network and Qriocity users, along with their birth dates, e-mail addresses and other personal information."While there is no evidence at this time that credit card data was taken, we cannot rule out the possibility," Sony said. It advised customers to create credit card fraud alerts and keep a close eye on charges made to linked credit cards.It also said the PlayStation Network and Qriocity would be back online "within a week."

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