Though none could say for certain if Sony would offer any kind of restitution to disappointed gamers, many were hopeful that the mammoth company would do more than simply say "thank you for being patient".
According to a recent press release, that hope has become a reality.
Patrick Seybold the Sr. Director of Corporate Communications & Social Media announced via direct blog the following: Now that some PlayStation Network and Qriocity services have been restored and you’re once again enjoying online gaming and entertainment, we’re happy to provide details about the “Welcome Back” appreciation program for customers in North America. We developed the program as an expression of our gratitude for your patience, support and continued loyalty during the service outage. From all of us at PlayStation, thank you and welcome back!
The full list of what gamers will receive can be found here, but the most note worthy are two downloadable games (some good ones like InFamous and Little Big Planent) and a free trial for time lost on various services, such as Plus and Music Unlimited.
Though it's incredibly generous of them, as they could have simply opted to replace lost time for certain subscriptions like Plus, Unlimited or DC Universe Online, after what we've been through is it enough?
My credit doesn't take a hit and no one steals from my bank account, yeah. I think it is. I've encountered worse over my two decades of gaming. Are they totally absolved? Not quite.
jerec May 16, 2011
True Blogger May 17, 2011
Or you may hate it. Either way, I'm curious.
jerec May 17, 2011
True Blogger May 17, 2011
jerec May 17, 2011
True Blogger May 17, 2011
SamildanachEmrys May 17, 2011
(Info from here: http://thegamershub.net/2011/05/psn-welcome-back-package-... )
CoarseDragon May 17, 2011
fleinn May 18, 2011
True Blogger May 19, 2011
It's possible that's Sony's way of showing appreciation to the enduring fans. Giving it away when it's so great, I mean, when they could easily make more money off of it.
fleinn May 19, 2011
They could also have made money off it by pushing the 1080p@60fps angle along with the... "actual functional motion-control in a game, that actually isn't just thrown in there to sell a gimmick" thing. And not having their internal advertisement peddler get Studio Liverpool to throw in an extra piece of software that cause these semi-periodic freezes due to some time-out issue. They never actually fixed that, and just removed the server-download for the terrible advertisements instead. Avoiding that kind of thing would have helped a lot, and not killed off the already small community at the time.
Not removing the connection-limitations, and keeping the checks that were in place at launch, also would have helped to avoid having a glitcher ruin every 2nd game you play - which again would have made the game play better. And not launched the studio into an expensive bug-hunt for exploits that didn't exist until that previous patch. Sure would have helped.
But whatever - Sony had to have their advertisement money, and the "available to everyone, specially people on broken wifi-connections" seal. Even if it meant shafting us, the ones who liked the game. Firing Psygnosis (this is Studio Liverpool - they've made unknowns such as Lemmings, G-Police, a couple of CGI-overlay games a bit ahead of Megarace and so on. Rollcage, Destruction Derby, Drakan, Lander, etc).
So Sony dissolved the studio. Because clearly they suck at making good games, apparently..
..I would like to know which higher-up someone at the studio pissed off, really. I'm sure there's a brilliant story behind all of this that we're never going to know.
But hey - at least you can play the best game on the ps3 for free now.
Masters Staff May 19, 2011
Looks like I'll be getting four free new games. Extra sweet for me since I was barely using my PS3 for online play, and so the outage didn't impact me very much.
zigfried May 19, 2011
//Zig
goatx3 May 19, 2011