In April, Sony's PlayStation Network came under attack from a group of hackers that exposed the personal information of the system's 75 million users and brought parts of the service down for more than a month. During Sony's annual shareholder meeting in June, CEO Howard Stringer said that more than 90 percent of the user base had returned.

　　Sony CEO Howard Stringer. This week, Howard turned the page on the whole incident, saying that the PSN is not just back but has actually grown by more than 3 million users since coming back online. According to a report on GameSpot sister-site CNET News, Stringer dropped the news during an address at the IGA electronics show in Berlin this week.

　　"This year, we at Sony have been flooded, we've been flattened, we've been hacked, we've been singed," Stringer said. "But the summer of our discontent is behind us."

　　Stringer also emphasized that the PSN is "more secure and better than ever," saying sales on the service have exceeded what they were before the hacking occurred.

　　The executive isn't the only Sony employee who's gotten over the hacking already. At the Develop conference in July, Media Molecule creative director Mark Healey told GameSpot the outage actually helped the Little Big Planet developer.

　　"Because Sony offered LBP1 as a freebie, the number [of people in the game's online community] rocketed up. I imagine a lot of the creators were just sort of, 'OK, I'm just going to make something ready to unleash when it comes back on.'"