(UPDATE 3) More than three days after problems began, the Sony PlayStation Networks were still at least partially down on Sunday. Sony is blaming "external forces" but hackers Anonymous deny involvement . The outage cut service for 70 million users including many who access Sony Music Unlimited via PlayStation and PSP devices. Details:

Just as Amazon's 24 hour cloud sever disruption, which brought down Hootsuite, Reddit and music startups including Indaba is being resolved, Sony's massive Playstation Network, its online service for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable consoles, suffered from a major outage this morning that the company admits could take days to resolve. 70 million registered users including those who access Sony's Qriocity Music Unlimited  service on PlayStation and PSP are without service.

On their web site Sony told users, "While we are investigating the cause of the Network outage, we wanted to alert you that it may be a full day or two before we’re able to get the service completely back up and running. Thank you very much for your patience while we work to resolve this matter. Please stay tuned to this space for more details, and we’ll update you again as soon as we can."

The outages come just as average consumers are beginning to understand that services they use daily are based in the cloud and experiment more with them. But while the outages may rattle consumer confidence in the cloud, ultimately its  potential is too great to ignore. For the companies involved, the last 48 hours offer a lesson in the value of redundant systems more than a fatal blow to their futures.

UPDATE: Hackers Anonymous who have attacked Sony previously denied involvement in today's major outage. Under the headline, “For Once We Didn’t Do It” the group posted, “While it could be the case that other Anons have acted by themselves, AnonOps was not related to this."