More details keep trickling out about Sony’s compensation plans for the PSN outage. While the store is not up yet, when it does come back up, they have some free games waiting for you. The plan is that each user will get to choose two PS3 games from a list of five and you can also choose two PSP games from a list of four. The game titles are, of course, Sony published games, and if you had expectations of free third party games you would have been completely mistaken. Here’s your options in North America:
PS3 Games:
- Dead Nation (metacritic: 77)
- inFAMOUS (metacritic: 85)
- LittleBigPlanet (metacritic: 95)
- Super Stardust HD (metacritic: 85)
- Wipeout HD + Fury (metacritic: 87)
PSP Games:
- LittleBigPlanet (PSP) (metacritic: 87)
- ModNation Racers (metacritic: 73)
- Pursuit Force (metacritic: 75)
- Killzone Liberation (metacritic: 77)
A fairly decent list, although one could argue that most of those games are older and there are no AAA recent titles on that list. I’ve only played inFAMOUS on the PS3 list and felt it was a very enjoyable open-world game, so if you’ve held out for that one, it’s easy to recommend for the low price of free. Also coming is some free rental movies over a one weekend and some PlayStation Home free virtual items.
To recap, Sony will be offering one year of credit monitoring, two free PS3 games (and two PSP games if you actually have a PSP), some free movie rentals for one weekend (too bad if you’re out of town), 30 days of PlayStation Plus, and the promise of better security. Of course, we have no well of telling how much more secure PSN is, although it’s been noted that Japan is not allowing PSN to go back online there because “Sony was incomplete in exercising measures that they said they will do on the May 1 press conference.” You can read more into how the Japanese government is treating the situation with Sony, here. That definitely makes me take pause a bit.
Has Sony done enough to win your confidence back? There is no doubt their brand has taken a beating, and it will take time to win back customer trust. The biggest issue is what recourse does the average gamer have against Sony if you didn’t feel you were compensated enough? Not much, aside from not purchasing any new Sony products going forward. Only time will tell on how badly the Sony/PS3 brand has been tarnished.
funk
I have been involved in both computers and video games since a very young age, cutting my teeth (literally) on an Apple IIe and an Intellivision. I've been writing about both for fun, off and on throughout the years, which eventually led me here -- still playing games and casually writing about them off an on.
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Has anyone ever bought a PSP?
I will probably get Wipeout just because racing games tend to work well on consoles. Don’t know much about the other ones.
It is not the compensation that bothers me, it is the lack of forward thinking that bothers me. And this is a historical problem with Sony. Again, how does a $77B company not have a CISO and claim that they take the security of my information seriously? CC information does not bother me much, as my CC company will cover that. It is the rest of that information that I am worried about. Can someone use that collection and sign up for services in my name? That is the big question.
Which is more of an outrage? Sony’s PSN security or the NFL lockout? Both are totally frivolous and non-important, but both have shown a complete lack of regard for their paying customers. Continuing the tradition of entertainment companies actually hating their customers.
Interesting question. The NFL picked this battle. Sony stumbled into theirs. Both are based on greed however and the end result is a tarnished reputation regardless.