*ren* PSN Down, Customer Info Compromised

[KongRudi]

they don't give a damn by offering ancient titles as "compensation".

They aren't 'ancient' titles.
It's some of the better titles over the platforms lifespan so far.
Dead Nation and Buzz Junior are less than half a year old.

PS3:

Dead Nation - December, 2010
Hustle Kings - January, 2010
Infamous - May, 2009
Little Big Planet - October 2008
Wipeout HD September 2008 (Fury expansion - July, 2009)
Ractchet & Clank: Q4B - August, 2008
Super Stardust HD - June, 2007

PSP

Buzz Junior Jungle party, November 2010
Modnation Racers PSP - May, 2010
LittleBigPlanet PSP - November, 2009
Everybody's Golf Portable 2 - June, 2008
Pursuit Force - March, 2006
Killzone Liberation: November, 2006

 

[AlNom]

I hate to break it to you, but 6 months ago was December 2010. As far as "ancient" goes, I suppose it's highly subjective, but the next releases in the list are a year to a year and a half old, a very long time in the gaming or technology world.

 

[Phil]

I hate to break it to you, but 6 months ago was December 2010. As far as "ancient" goes, I suppose it's highly subjective, but the next releases in the list are a year to a year and a half old, a very long time in the gaming or technology world.

That may be true, but lets be honest here - what was released within the past 6 months on PSN that would be considered better value than what they are offering? Only PixelJunk Shooter 2 comes to my mind and why they aren't offering that is pretty obvious.

To be honest - I'm surprised the titles they're offering are that good. I consider LBP and WipEout HD/Fury to be among the best games this generation. One could argue that LBP is a little outdated now that LBP2 hit the shelves, but no one in their right mind would expect them to give that one out for free, not to mention it isn't available as a downloadable title in the first place. Despite this LBP is an amazing game for the price - the amount of replayability and content absurd and worth well more than they ever sold it for. And now you can get it for free.

Ratchet & Clank, also, is a very very good title and is clearly of higher value than the cheaper PSN titles. Star Dust, IMO also one of the best games on PSN despite its age.

If one was to get a PlayStation3 new and ask for any recommendations for PSN games, at least 3 of that 7 title list would be on it. I really don't see the issue here, apart from posting on a forum of devoted gamers in the 25+ age group that most likely own most of those games.

 

[ShadowRunner]

That may be true, but lets be honest here - what was released within the past 6 months on PSN that would be considered better value than what they are offering? Only PixelJunk Shooter 2 comes to my mind and why they aren't offering that is pretty obvious.

To be honest - I'm surprised the titles they're offering are that good. I consider LBP and WipEout HD/Fury to be among the best games this generation. One could argue that LBP is a little outdated now that LBP2 hit the shelves, but no one in their right mind would expect them to give that one out for free, not to mention it isn't available as a downloadable title in the first place.

Ratchet & Clank, also, is a very very good title and is clearly of higher value than the cheaper PSN titles. Star Dust, IMO also one of the best games on PSN despite its age.

If one was to get a PlayStation3 new and ask for any recommendations for PSN games, at least 3 of that 7 title list would be on it. I really don't see the issue here, apart from posting on a forum of devoted gamers in the 25+ age group that most likely own most of those games.

That was my thinking exactly. I dont think anyone can say Sony havent tried to offer the best games they could.

As Shifty has been saying the only realistic thing the could/should have done is offer a wider selection of 1st party games. Its fair point and certainly would have reduced the complaints, but on the other hand offering a selection of 5 games is hardly the end of the world either i can understand a little negativity but not this much.

 

[goonergaz]

Of course, but the happiness rating would go up from, say, 80% to 97%, and with the vocal Internet users siding much more with Sony. In the cost:benefits balance, shifting a much better happy medium could have been reached.

True, but in all honesty I think you might be surprised how few are complaining - remember - you only hear those who complain!

Is there going to be much market for Infamous and LBP when pretty much everyone can get them free? There'll be those without PSN accounts, which is a lot, but then the market is also going to be flooded with used copies, surely. Best get in quick!

Yeah, but timeless classics like those 2 should always get you around £5 - any new purchasers would be nuts not to pick those up for ~£5.

On a side note, can people stop with the MS love - for a start RRoD was apparent from day one so really other than a complete recall they had no option but to give people a better warranty. Also, I've had no end of trouble from them, from lying to me on the phone about refunding me for a gold sub the automatically renewed (I ended up having to phone 3 times) to not being able to play games I leagally purchased via XBLA when I had used up my limit of 1 DRM xfer per year when I replaced my old X360 with a slim (which was faulty, so I ended up needing to xfer again but couldn't). So I ended up not being able to play my games for a year because (again) they lied on the phone saying things were being escallated and they would resent the DRM thing - but they never did and I just gave up chasing them. What compenstation do I get for all my phone calls and loss of games for a year? Nothing.

 

[AlNom]

As Shifty has been saying the only realistic thing the could/should have done is offer a wider selection of 1st party games.

Bingo.

On a side note, can people stop with the MS love

It's a pretty awful basis for comparison, putting a hardware issue up against a software one. As for your personal experience with them, it is unfortunate, but you're now considering your problems to be as widespread as either the RROD or the PSN attacks.

These comparisons just shouldn't be made in the first place, so continuing the arguments just drags down the discussion as much as the game threads in the last couple months.

not being able to play games I leagally purchased via XBLA

This is clearly an off-topic question, but do you not have the console hooked up to the internet all the time? It just strikes me as odd you couldn't play them considering the DRM is a non-issue with the console connected to Xbox Live.

 

[Phil]

As Shifty has been saying the only realistic thing the could/should have done is offer a wider selection of 1st party games.

Bingo.

Sure, more is always better. I just don't see how the big criticism in here can be attributed to the amount of games being offered, as they are offering a reasonable array of games (and good games too!). Would adding another 2 or more, probably mediocre, games significantly enhance the potential of receiving praise instead of the amount of criticism they are getting in here? I think not.

As other have already pointed out - offering more games only enhances the problem of people downloading more than two games through having multiple accounts. The trade-off was probably between offering a wider selection of games (with the potential of cusomers getting more than the 2 allowed games) or offer a limited 30 day trial period of Plus membership (which will give you many games for free during the duration of the membership or percentage on other games indefinately).

 

[goonergaz]

This is clearly an off-topic question, but do you not have the console hooked up to the internet all the time? It just strikes me as odd you couldn't play them considering the DRM is a non-issue with the console connected to Xbox Live.

Sorry, I didn't mean to go into a bit of a rant - but the way people hold up MS as a shinning example of how to treat customers is (frankly) laughable!

Anyway, WRT my issue - I bought a slim & xferred the games to it - it then developed a fault so I got it swapped out (pretty much straight away - within a few days) - however my games were locked down due to the DRM limit (or whatever it is) - and after ~1 hour in phone calls and broken promises I just gave up (been there with the XBLA re-sub issue as have many others I know).

Sorry, I ended up ranting again...if it's any consolation Ninty are just as bad - I paid loads (around £80 IIRC) to send my mint Wii to the US only to have one sent back to me that looked like they had played football with it. Many ignored emails and phone calls later I gave up with them too.

They are all as bad as each other...Sony didn't want to know when my JP unit died over xmas, suggesting I get it back to Japan it get it fixed! I think I only give them a bit more slack as I prefer their way of doing things - like sharing software on multiple machines, not having to pay online (and then for multiple accounts for my kids) etc - it just fits my requirements a lot more than the other 2 (Wii with it's limited game slots is unforgivable IMHO).

Anyway I've gone way OT - sorry.

 

[ShadowRunner]

As for your personal experience with them, it is unfortunate, but you're now considering your problems to be as widespread as either the RROD or the PSN attacks.

To be fair, we have just as much data on how many people are dissapointed with Sony over this as we have about MS and RROD. His problems are in theory just as widespread as negative feelings toward Sonys offer.

I cant shake the feeling that in both cases (RROD and PSN) people that are not even effected are complaining on behalf of a mass of people that may or may not even exist, its hard to get an idea of the amount of people who genuinely are hard done by. For all the people complaining how many actually have all the games listed? Looking at actual sales and probability of owning every game it will be a fraction of a percent. At some point it becomes insignificant, if 0.02% of people are dissapointed vs 0.01% if they offered 10 games instead is it really a big deal? You can always do better but at what point do you stop?

Is anyone here good with probabilities? it would be interesting to get an idea of how many people have more than 3/5 of the games, and it should be possible to calculate.

On a personal level the offering is great, i have 4 accounts (UK,US,JP,HK). Depending on the JP/HK offering in theory i will be getting 8 PS3 games + 8 PSP games + 3 months on UK PSN+ and 1 month of US, JP and HK PSN+ and thus the free games and discounts associated with that (many of the free PSN+ games are actually still valid after subscription expiration too iirc) + 1 year of credit protection insurance. I do have some of the listed games but some will still be of value as the DLC version is value to me and i can give away my physiscal copies to friends and family which i personally find value in(who i can then play online with, for instance i would be able to play online with my nefew in LBP). Will get value from games i own like Wipeout/LBP because a influx in players bringing the MP mode back to life. Would be interesting to here other peoples situations.

 

[goonergaz]

On a personal level the offering is great, i have 4 accounts (UK,US,JP,HK). Depending on the JP/HK offering in theory i will be getting 8 PS3 games + 8 PSP games

I have lots of accounts too but I think the offer it pretty much the same across the board isn't it? And even then you'll need to re-register all the accounts - and I'm fairly certain you won't get the PSP games as it needs to be registered with your account (so only the UK offering)

+ 3 months on UK PSN+ and 1 month of US, JP and HK PSN+ and thus the free games and discounts associated with that (many of the free PSN+ games are actually still valid after subscription expiration too iirc)

Again I'd be interested to see if I get PS+ for the other countries...but why do you think you get 3mths for UK? I thought it was 60 days for current subbers - not 30+60days? Also the only stuff you keep will be anything you buy, themes & avatars

 

[RobertR1]

For retail options, they could have gone with LBP2, Killzone 3 and Heavy Rain. Newer games that would resonate better. Personally that would have been awesome. Don't think too many others would mind either.

 

[NavNucST3]

...

I've said as much myself! PS+ may offer good discounts on content a person wants, and so be a good gain over the month. At this point we aren't sure though, and PS+ hasn't offered me much opportunities that I would have benefited from. There will be other people in the same boat where the promise of PS+ membership doesn't sound worth much to them. All we know at this point for certain is that there's a choice of five games, not to everyone's liking. If Sony were to extend the selection, they'd please more people. If that's something they want to do, please people, then they still have time to change their selection.

You seem to agree this would be a good idea, so I don't understand where your complaints against the disgruntled minority comes from!

This is my viewpoint as well which I why I suggested not having any list and only giving out months of "+". It's also a better revenue play.

 

[ShadowRunner]

I have lots of accounts too but I think the offer it pretty much the same across the board isn't it? And even then you'll need to re-register all the accounts - and I'm fairly certain you won't get the PSP games as it needs to be registered with your account (so only the UK offering)

Thought PSP was registerd to the console but thinking about it probably not. I have already re-registered my UK and US acc, didnt have to do any email stuff just signed into PSN on my ps3 and it let me change my password then and there. The JP/HK stores will offer different games im sure and who knows they may even get even mor thrown in. As it stands i can get 4/6 games offered on UK/US stores 2 from each, and 4/? games from JP/HK stores, again 2 from each.

Again I'd be interested to see if I get PS+ for the other countries...but why do you think you get 3mths for UK? I thought it was 60 days for current subbers - not 30+60days? Also the only stuff you keep will be anything you buy, themes & avatars

Dont see why you wouldnt get it for other countries, we'll see. 60 days plus 1 day for every day PSN was down, so 3 months.

For retail options, they could have gone with LBP2, Killzone 3 and Heavy Rain. Newer games that would resonate better. Personally that would have been awesome. Don't think too many others would mind either.

As far as im aware none of those are DL titles. They could send out disks but that would be massively complicated and expensive for 77 million accounts. They dont even have peoples true addresses.

 

[goonergaz]

The JP/HK stores will offer different games im sure and who knows they may even get even mor thrown in. As it stands i can get 4/6 games offered on UK/US stores 2 from each, and 4/? games from JP/HK stores, again 2 from each.

Well that's if the list is any different...funny they've not mentioned anything for JP/HK yet. My other curiosity is on if just having the account is going to be enough...also I'm not sure if I could remember all my log-intails!

60 days plus 1 day for every day PSN was down, so 3 months.

"Existing PlayStation Plus subscribers will receive an additional 60 days of free subscription." - I assume they mean additional to what we currently have left - so 60 bonus days, not 60+down-time

BTW, I'm just trying to manage expectations - I'm more than happy to be proven wrong here!

 

[temesgen]

Then define how many you think it is. 10%, 5% 20% ?

You are just blowing hot air, the most negative comments in this thread about the "welcome back" package is clearly from hardcore XBOX users. So i would think you might have something a bit more concrete than this thread?

Agreed, PSN is down and hardcore XBOX users are going to overstate the problem while hardcore PS3 users are going to understate it. Actually pretty silly - of course any reasonable person can see that down time is down time so all the shock that PSN has been down for nearly a month while praising MS for only losing 5 days is BS. RROD has caused many 360m users to be down far more than than 30 days the good news is that both Sony and MS have recognised that they needed to deal seriously with their problems and provided decent compensation. In the case of RROD 3 year warranty in the case of Sony free games for both your PSP and PS3 - both companies came up with decent solutions.

 

[temesgen]

If you look around MS offered not only retail games but also hardrives to those affected along with extra live time.

My cousin who had a core unit got a 20 gig hardrive and a friend of mine got Perfect Dark Zero and Kameo .

MS has already handled the RROD better than Sony every handled PS1 and PS2 drive failures , both times sony had to be sued and lost before offering to help .


Hell look at ms , the new update doesn't work with some older xbox 360 systems so ms is going to comp those people a new xbox 360 slim .

MS has simply handled this generation better than sony. The RROD was a major problem but they extended the warrenty and have given many users retail games and hardrives and other acessorys .

Sonys system failures have been met with the consumer footing the bill.

MS has worked to drive console prices down while increasing the featuers in the system. The xbox 360 had hdmi added to it , had wifi added to it . Sony on the other hand has removed BC , removed other os , removed ports from the console in an effort to reduce costs to compete.

Everytime live goes out for an extended period of time (days not weeks ) MS makes good and comps the time and gives free games . Some sony users have been unable to go online for a month and sony's make good offer is pretty poor for many users.

MS has to comp time for a service you pay for if the service isn't available, the phone company, cable company all do the same things. Swapping out 360 slims for those affected by the firmware update is very cool. With that said I don't know anyone personally who has gotten harddrives or games for RROD and using your logic aren't Kameo and Perfect Dark old games that nobody wants anyways?

Sony couldn't add what the console already came with and as far as the USB is concerned - what exactly are you going to do with 4 ports that you cant do with 2? I have a launch PS3 and I can't think of a single time I have used 2 ports of the USB much less 4.

Its clear you love MS and MS are a great company with great products the 360 being one of them but your preference for all things MS doesn't allow you give Sony any credit to the point where you criticize them for offering consumers full retail games as compensation for losing access to a free service which I am sure the TOS state Sony is not responsible for down time while attempting to use.

 

[dlm]

Saying that MS has on the whole handled the problems that they've run in to so far this gen better than Sony is not an indictment of Sony as actively malicious or entirely incompetent. It's simply a statement of the peceived value of compensation that the company's have offered to date for the issues that their users have experienced.

I think it's a legit point that Sony's compensation for the PSN outage is going to have little to no value for some subset of consumers. It's also accurate to say that they might not have a whole lot of options beyond what they're saying they're doing.

In terms of what consumers are "owed", there are users who paid for games that were essentially unplayable for a month due to the outage. Although Sony may have no legal obligation, their security oversights did screw over a portion of their user base, and doing something is clearly "right". With little legal responsibility, I doubt that anyone will ever agree on what the extent of their ethical responsbility is.

So can we please stop the calls of bias and whatnot? It's not constructive.


My personal opinion is that in a few months we'll all look back on this and say that although Sony's response to this issue what terribly delayed, that the ultimate resolution was somewhat reasonable.

What I'm really curious to see is if this has a lasting impact on PSN sales. I know that I'm not likely to type my CC info in to PSN any time soon.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Sure, more is always better. I just don't see how the big criticism in here can be attributed to the amount of games being offered, as they are offering a reasonable array of games (and good games too!). Would adding another 2 or more, probably mediocre, games significantly enhance the potential of receiving praise instead of the amount of criticism they are getting in here? I think not.

I disagree. Firstly the games don't have to be mediocre, only different. Something like Flower won't be owned by many, but would offer choice for those with 4/5 of these titles. Secondly, one person's 'mediocre' is another's 'good fun', so I'm not sure you can even go by that reckoning.

As other have already pointed out - offering more games only enhances the problem of people downloading more than two games through having multiple accounts. The trade-off was probably between offering a wider selection of games (with the potential of cusomers getting more than the 2 allowed games).

Is that really much of a problem though? Any year+ older game likely isn't going to get a lot of interest, so offering them won't equate to lost sales, and hence even if people download all the games, it won't actually cost Sony anything. Maybe too many games = too many hours free entertainment and not as many purchases of new titles, but I don't feel that'd be a significant impact. People probably aren't likely to play a game they didn't care to buy over a game they did care to buy just because that less-interesting title was free. I'd even say offering games like Fat Princess and Warhawk in their vanilla form could attract new players that'd buy the DLC.

 

[joker454]

Showing your true colors here?
Free games can hardly be considered "online scraps" by anyone but the most negative in the crowd. Just because someone happens to have those games doesn´t take away the value from the games, just from the person that can´t benefit 100%.

People keep going on about how psn is free so somehow it's ok that it's down for a month and that people should be grateful for anything given. That simply doesn't fly anymore in 2011 with any company, be they in video games or wherever. If iTunes went down or somehow didn't allow people to play their music, podcasts, etc for a month, then I guarantee you people would be pissed at Apple if they "compensated" everyone by giving them free Beatles songs. In most circles that would be deemed worthless compensation because obviously not everyone likes the Beatles so naturally that form of compensation would be considered worthless by many. The same thing applies to Sony's compensation but people seem to be having a difficult time grasping that, everyone is just supposed to be grateful even if they don't have a psp or have played all the games in the compensation list. Heck I don't even game much on ps3 at all yet I've played every game in that list except for Dead Nation, a game which I have zero interest in. So if I were still an active ps3 gamer then I wouldn't feel compensated at all because to me it's all worthless, yet I would have to listen to others beat it into my head how I should be grateful to be offered stuff that's worthless to me. How does that make any sense, and how can that be deemed proper for a company in 2011 in terms of user satisfaction? I really don't get it at all.

Sony's response doesn't seem out of line with what I'd expect in the normal course of events. there's not much else they can do. They can't credit accounts with money in the same way MS could give 400 points because PSN accounts are free so there's are multiple, unpaying accounts. For MS to give $5 to every Live member (and their compensation was only a portion of accounts), if there are 30 million subscribers, that'd cost them $150 million - maybe their profit margin for that year's gold subscriptions. For Sony to give $5 to every PSN account, that'd be ~$400 million with no clear revenue stream to cover that cost. I'm not sure even MS would shell out that much on free stuff for a similar situation, although they could afford to.

They could credit any account that has actually spent money on psn or has been used for online on psn. If a particular account has never been used for online play and has never bought anything then for those they can assume they are dummy accounts and offer those the free month of psn+. For the rest of the accounts, those that have been used for online play or have been used to purchase content on psn can be assumed to be real accounts, those should have been credited whatever amount to use how the person sees fit. Yeah it costs them coin but too bad, they blew it and they have to now make amends or forever be remembered as the "too bad we don't care" company. The way they have handled it now is poor and will result in fallout, obviously not from the Sony faithful but from the more ambivalent crowd that isn't brand loyal.

 

[eastmen]

MS has to comp time for a service you pay for if the service isn't available, the phone company, cable company all do the same things. Swapping out 360 slims for those affected by the firmware update is very cool. With that said I don't know anyone personally who has gotten harddrives or games for RROD and using your logic aren't Kameo and Perfect Dark old games that nobody wants anyways?

They are games that are offered along with $100 pieces of hardware. It was the user's choice. I don't see sony offering any hardware to the consumer to make up for the failure

Sony couldn't add what the console already came with and as far as the USB is concerned - what exactly are you going to do with 4 ports that you cant do with 2? I have a launch PS3 and I can't think of a single time I have used 2 ports of the USB much less 4.

I have a keyboard , two usb plugs for the controllers and a fan to keep my ps3 cool while it was still working. Unless you think its good to only be able to charge two controllers at once and use usb for nothing else

Its clear you love MS and MS are a great company with great products the 360 being one of them but your preference for all things MS doesn't allow you give Sony any credit to the point where you criticize them for offering consumers full retail games as compensation for losing access to a free service which I am sure the TOS state Sony is not responsible for down time while attempting to use.

I can give credit to sony where its due , I don't see it being due however. I see this as full blown failure on sonys part . They have not only lost service for a month , but then had more attacks due to their own idiocy and to top it off they have had their customers information and credit card information stolen.

This is far worse than hardware failures or live being down for a few days.


I think way to many people are dismissing what has happened to give sony a pass. Japan wouldn't let sony bring back the servers because they felt Sony didn't add the proper security. A country is stoping sony from screwing more people , but I guess there is allways going to be a subset that will protect a company for some odd reason