We all know about the breach of Sony’s PSN and Qriocity services earlier on, but do you know how much that attack cost Sony? Taking down the system means no sales, hiring security firms mean extra cost burnt, and how about the stocks of Sony Corp? The news isn’t going to be good for shareholders of Sony.

Finally putting some kind of official estimate on the damage caused by last month’s attack on the PlayStation Network, Sony has pegged the total cost to be around USD$170 million.

“Based on information currently available to Sony, our currently known costs associated with the unauthorized network access are estimated to be approximately 14 billion yen in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2012,” Sony said today in an official earnings forecast statement.

As it stands at time of posting, that’s exactly USD$171,203,043 estimated damage. There’s no detailed breakdown of just how those costs are spread out – how much is down to estimates on the loss of business, direct costs of fixing stuff, etc – but hey, it all contributes to the same bottom line. And that’s one painful bottom line.