Sony Defends "Welcome Back" Reward Choices

[sergnb]

I don't get people are complaining. Talk about crybabies.

I have 4 of those 10 games and I am still thankful Sony is trying to compensate with something they didn't even have to in the first place.

Dead Nation and Wipeout all the way for me

 

[Echo136]

Im certainly fine with the choices. This is just a case of people feeling a sense of entitlement again

 

[El Poncho]

I like the games on the list, all games i
I've considered buying but never got round to.

 

[Weaver]

I have a few problems
1) Most die hard sony fans likely own all whopping FIVE games they're offering. Couldn't they have broadened the selection a bit? Why not just give us all $50 to spend on the play station store or something instead of deciding for us what we want?

2) The Playstation PLUS thing feels like a total marketing ploy instead of an "I'm Sorry" gift. It's sony's way of tring to lure in more customers into paying monthly fees. "Oh, what's that? After 30 days all that content disappeared? Guess you'd better sign up for playstation plus to get it back!"

 

[Dora]

Seriously? Seriously?? People are complaining about this? Personally, I was kinda stunned that the list included the high quality titles that it did... the most my husband and I had guessed they were going to offer was like a $5 credit for the PS Store or something. Personally, I've never played Infamous or Little Big Planet (or actually even any of the other titles they're offering) so it seems pretty generous to me. I'm sure I'd be disappointed if I already owned those games, but it's not like I feel I was owed anything to begin with.

 

[koroem]

And yet again, another Company/person/tentacle monster that thinks Metacritic is useful.

Metacritic is trash and evil.

 

[Icehearted]

People are HONESTLY complaining about receiving FREE games?

Maybe they should learn: don't look at gift horse in the mouth.

Not so sure I'd call stolen credit card information or leaked personal data a gift-anything. Also, free doesn't exactly make up for the aforementioned non-gifty things that happened because Sony was asleep at the helm.

There aren't even any reports of money getting stolen yet, so yeahh..

Because stolen personal information always and immediately results in stolen money? Really? I thought Identity theft was something people worried about. I though people would dislike having their names and personal information sold or misused by others. Shows what I know...

 

[GonzoGamer]

I have a few problems
1) Most die hard sony fans likely own all whopping FIVE games they're offering. Couldn't they have broadened the selection a bit? Why not just give us all $50 to spend on the play station store or something instead of deciding for us what we want?

2) The Playstation PLUS thing feels like a total marketing ploy instead of an "I'm Sorry" gift. It's sony's way of tring to lure in more customers into paying monthly fees. "Oh, what's that? After 30 days all that content disappeared? Guess you'd better sign up for playstation plus to get it back!"

1. That would?ve been great and I would?ve taken back all the horrible things I?ve said about them for the past couple of years if they did that but I can totally understand why they couldn?t. First of all, that?s a big cash loss for them; there?s no way that they could?ve gotten all the devs with content on psn to team up with them on that.
They are giving out some pretty cool games but I do wish the variety was a little broader. I own 4 of the 5 games they?re offering on the ps3 but none of the psp games so I still get some new stuff at least. As for the second ps3 game, I?ll probably just sell/give-away infamous and download it.

At the same time there were some other opportunities left untouched: what about teaming up with Bethesda/Obsidian and offer the New Vegas dlc for free since they sold us a broken game and took 6 months to fix it (provided the latest patch actually worked). They owe us an apology more than Sony does: psn wasn?t down for 6 months and didn?t cost me $60.

2. Well, I can?t argue with you there. The ps+ offer is a pretty transparent attempt to recoup revenue lost from the outage. I?m just not going to spend any money on the ?offers.? I just hope they make those purchases clear for people who don't know any better.

 

[Macrobstar]

...Did he just say inFamous is a high quality game?!

Spoiler: I have only one reaction to that statement.

Last time I checked, high quality games don't have mediocre, dreadfully bland third person shooter gameplay, terrible characters, an even more terrible plot, and some of the worst "choices" ever offered inside a game.

But anyway, as I just got done saying in another thread, I don't care about the list of free games being mostly old stuff that all the loyal fans likely already have and is partially designed to get people to spend more money. I never wanted free games from them anyway and am happy to not download any of them or use any of the PS+ subscription.

Wow so much wrong in one snetence, I'm sure when he was saying it was a high quality game he was basing that on almost every critics opinion (Including yahtzee), since it was such a success I think hes justified to call it a high quality game, plus everything you said about it was wrong soooo
Also for most people to own the game it would have needed to sell 38 million copies :/ so yeh looks like someone is super wrong

 

[Macrobstar]

They are offering great titles for free. But those are great games that most PS3 owners probably already have bought and played anyway. Be like MS giving away Halo3, Red Dead Redemption and Gears of War 2...most people have already bought and played those. Would be better just giving points away to spend on stuff when ever you wanted.

I said this to someone else saying that most people own them is preposterous, thats 51% of sonys user base which is 77 million people

 

[bombadilillo]

This is a great chance to get my firends to get lbp, we have fun playing it, buy never enough for them to buy it. good times to be had.

 

[Macrobstar]

People are HONESTLY complaining about receiving FREE games?

Maybe they should learn: don't look at gift horse in the mouth.

Not so sure I'd call stolen credit card information or leaked personal data a gift-anything. Also, free doesn't exactly make up for the aforementioned non-gifty things that happened because Sony was asleep at the helm.

There aren't even any reports of money getting stolen yet, so yeahh..

Because stolen personal information always and immediately results in stolen money? Really? I thought Identity theft was something people worried about. I though people would dislike having their names and personal information sold or misused by others. Shows what I know...

No I think hes right, know one I know really cares, what are they gonna do with the info?

 

[FFHAuthor]

I have mixed opinions on the subject to be honest. I can understand Sony's perspective on matters. They want to offer compensation that they feel isn't going to cost them anything, which is why I think the reception has been sort of luke warm at best. Consider for example that we have sequels out there/on the way for inFamous and Little Big Planet, and that while the other titles are well reviewed they are also fairly old and at this point probably aren't seeing much in the way of sales given that most people who would have wanted them already paid money for them. "God Of War III", to use the article writer's example, is one of last year's games, BUT it's also a game they doubtlessly feel they will move more copies of. If they give 77 million people a free copy that actually costs them susbtantial amounts of money in future sales compared to the titles they are offering.

In comparison Sony doesn't want to give something like a substantial blanket PSN discount, like 50% off on all purchuses, because again that will cost them money. Sony effectively having to pay that 50% to the merchants that people buy from, or seeing people using that oppertunity to "stock up" and then losing a lot of money in potential sales that would have happened over a period of time had they not offered the deal.

It's a situation where frankly Sony wants to make a gesture for purposes of public relations, but at the same time doesn't want that gesture to actually cost them very much to make. As this is fairly transparent, and I'm not the only one seeing it that way, the reaction is generally negative.

I don't consider this the quintessential "gift horse" because this isn't an act of generosity out of the blue. It's an attempt by Sony to compensate people for their loss of time in using their network, and hopefully repair damage to it's reputation. There are issues here beyond the down time itself, but also in what motivated the attacks, while not as prolific as the people QQing about not being able to use PSN in general, there are still quite a few people who are POed over the removal of the "other OS" option, combined with Sony lying about the reasons and so on, which is what provoked the attack to begin with.

We'll see what happens, but honestly I don't think anyone should be surprised that for all the build up Sony's gesture was ultimatly fairly pointless. Sony just wasn't going to lose out on hundreds of millions of dollars in potential revenues (given the number of people affected) in a gesture of good will. It would have been awesome if they did, and I would probably have been viewing them a little more positively to be honest, but that's not what happened.

Well put, I'd have to say that I agree with the synopsis since none of the free games being offered are games that I have any true interest in. Hearing 'hey here's free stuff' but realizing it's stuff that I wouldn't buy no matter what makes me say, meh...okay...and start to wonder why -those- are the only games they decided on offering, five out of a PS3 lineup of, what...hundreds? (might be generous, but there is a large selection) Not to mention smaller games, indie games, and things that are only store available, why go with those five and not larger scale AAA games that are older (Modern Warfare), or smaller niche games (Just HOW MANY hunting or fishing games are out there). Not to mention expansion packs and such for games that are out there, like Battlefield 2: Vietnam or Black Ops Map Packs.

Yeah, they're going to lose those sales, but let's face it, when you give people something as a conciliatory gesture for being inconvenienced, not to mention the outright LOSS of all your personal data...just giving us a few free games we might never have played is a hollow gesture.

 

[Macrobstar]

They are offering great titles for free. But those are great games that most PS3 owners probably already have bought and played anyway. Be like MS giving away Halo3, Red Dead Redemption and Gears of War 2...most people have already bought and played those. Would be better just giving points away to spend on stuff when ever you wanted.

I said this to someone else saying that most people own them is preposterous, thats 51% of sonys user base which is 77 million people

I agree totally. But if a person has these games already,then they should get something else. The trophies on there account would tell sony who these people are so its not like they can con them.

Well yes but theres kaways gonna be someone who owns all the games unless they give away crappy obscure title that no ones heard of or even wants to buy, the only way they could get round it is to just give everyone £20 worth of credit and just say go nuts

 

[xxBucdieselxx]

I am not impressed. I don't really care at this point, everything I have seen Sony do so far, is the equivalent to doing what their lawyers told them to do, so they can avoid law suits. The PSN Plus offer, is just a way to try and rope more people in to Playstation Plus, the movies, meh, there might be a few worth watching, but if it is anything like the games they are out dated, and chances are have already been watched at least once (plus if you have netflix, why the hell would you use the PSN store for movies?). The games offer is just crap (not the games themselves LBP, Infamous, and Super Stardust HD are good, I just happen to own them already). I don't know what the people in Europe got, but here in America the titles are old out dated, and have already made enough money so Sony doesn't care about giving them away. I would have been more likely to remain loyal if they offered up nothing. Am I pissed about PSN being down for a month? kinda not really, I really wanted to play Socom online, but after it coming back up and playing Socom online, I see they ruined that title as well. Sony has done a great job of pushing core faithfuls away, while catering to the casual crowd. I may get hammered for this but, this "welcome back" program is pathetic at best.

 

[8-Bit Grin]

The idea about free sony store credit, say, 25 bucks would have been swanky, but I like the offerings.

Ditto.

I'm excited about inFamous, but it would have been totally bitchin' to take that previously mentioned $25 and buy GTAIV DLC.