EU PSN Welcome Back Pack; My Reaction

I'm willing to forgive Sony on this one as in this modern day of age, nothing is unhackable and especially by Anonymous, sure some mistakes were made, but it was exactly these kind that made Sony and the PS3 the way it was improving before this whole mess. I am willing to forgive and the fact that somewhere my details are lurking about on the internet and checking my money twice as much as I used to.

Now that's out of the way, I feel I have to bring up the EU Welcome Back Pack.

THE PS3 GAMES

The two games to select for free are pretty good. But as most have said, we already have them.

1. LittleBigPlanet
I'm pretty sure that most of us own LBP and some of us, LBP2 (Which I ashamedly don't yet), but really? LBP? I mean no offense, but as great as this is for a gift for the consumers, all the fans have already bought it and been waiting for PSN to come back up in order to play it again!

2. Infamous
This one's pretty fair. Infamous 2 is coming out soon and not everyone played the original, to be honest, this is a beast of a game to get free. Only second down from Uncharted:DF which probably should of been one of the giveaways. But I already own this and completed in Good and Infamous. If you haven't played Infamous and hyped for Infamous 2, this is a great freebie and perfect timing too.

3. Wipeout HD/Fury
This is actually utterly brilliant again, for those that don't own it. Again, unlike ME.
Anyway, trust me, Wipeout HD is a complete blast, so if this actually does turn out to be the bundle with the Fury expansion pack too, that's pretty neat. Wipeout HD is by far the most crisp racing experience on PS3, plus it has that slick futuristic design, pumping soundtrack, splitscreen features, custom soundtracks and online modes. If you're one that doesn't own this game, that's a great one to jump onto.

4. Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty
I'm one of the rare people to of owned and played R&C:Q4B before the release of Crack in Time, and believe me, It's a pretty neat game. That is. If you DON'T OWN IT. It was my honest belief that this game should of been given away as it is the perfect prequel to Crack in Time. It's a direct continuation from Tools of Destruction and has Ratchet stuck on an island surrounded by odd villagers and pirates. No sign of Clank due to the evens of the last game, but Ratchet can fend on his own. Some very good game mechanics and some graphics that for a download title, even rival Tools of Destruction's graphics, it was originally a great bite sized adventure between both games, a must play for Ratchet fans. Again, if you don't ALREADY OWN it.

5. Dead Nation
This game never hit my radar and I never bought it, sorry, I said it. I have Burn Zombie Burn (which would of made an AWESOME giveaway) and I just felt like I didn't need more. The whole '4 survivors and zombies' concept is so generic now. Even though it's by the makers of the fab Superstardust HD. I just wasn't interested, as a freebie, I guess I can accept.

THE PSP GAMES

Not a bad selection actually, a little GoW:GoS wouldn't go amiss though.

1. LittleBigPlanet PSP
Now, personally, this hit the jackpot. Yes. I would love to own this for free and I will do, I played a friend's copy and it was pretty good. I'd love to have this on the go and I also know a lot of people didn't buy it due to not actually being a sequel, but having a different plotline with the same name...Nice One Sony!

2. ModNation PSP
I have no idea what Modnation Racers PSP plays like. I've played a brief demo of the PS3 version (which again would of made a nice giveaway). But I guess I can accept the PSP version with open arms.

3. Pursuit Force
This is like giving Resistance 1 to people. No offence, but come on should of at least given Daxter or Medievil Resurrection instead as these were far better launch titles or even the recent Jak which wasn't that bad, nor great anyway. Poor, very poor Sony.

4. Killzone Liberation*
I'm just not interested. Wasn't then, hasn't changed now, changing the genre around before the sequel, I don't know, it just didn't gel to me. I would of preferred the similarly changed genre game of Resistance Retribution instead which came out about the same time as Resistance 2.
Even if it does result in me having played all the Killzone games...yeah, just not bothered.

THE SERVICE FREEBIES

1. 30 days free PlayStation Plus membership for non PS Plus subscribers*
Good, but I'm not too keen on the idea of a month to like games I own to suddenly have them whipped away and forced to continue the drip fed service with payments, all I can say, the discounts better be good.

2. Existing PlayStation Plus subscribers will be given 60 days free subscription.
This is great for PS+ owners as they get this valuable time back.

3. For existing Music Unlimited subscribers, you will be given 30 days free subscription.
yep, not interested, but okay. This should of been upped to 3 months or something due to details having been hacked and stolen as this is the real issue here.

4. We are working on a Welcome Back offer in PlayStation Home and will share that when it is confirmed.
Originally an avid supporter of the concept of Playstation Home, but now not, I found myself deleting the program to save space, I might of missed out on 'T-Shirts' and dressing around like a weird stereotypical Britishman, but I can't honestly say this is a GOOD thing as this is like Sony beating a dead horse.

Well, that's my verdict. It's kind of 'yay', but kind of 'meh' and although I'm not one to complain and revolt, I wouldn't be surprised if others will because we practically already own all these free games. So. In that way of thinking, Sony still owes one.
Never the less, good start but maybe this shows Sony doesn't really know their fanbase after all, because they're practically trying to give away the games the fans have already snapped up on release. We'd better be getting some good PSN updates, future firmwares and have great protection of our data, otherwise, this is going to look even worse than it does already.

[unicronic]

Good points, although the movies/music services are useless to those outside US/EU.

In addition most games are 2+ years old and do not reward early adopters.

[mastiffchild]

Well, I've got ALL the PSP games and am limited to getting DN and Wipeout as the only PS3 ones I haven't already bought but we seem to forget that we HAVE to be the tiny, teeny minority here. Sure, 70 million is a bogus number of users but even though some of US may have multiple accounts and some PS3s have bitten the dust you will still find around 50million active accounts I'd guess and probably MORE users-we have two PS3's a two proper accounts in our house used by five people(the kids use one and me and the wife the other and even with my,and I'm rare for having them outside of N4G trust me, US and JP acct it doesn't add up to more than five,does it?).

My point is: the highest selling of the free games is KLBP with, what, less than 4million sales? Then threy go down through the others starting with iinFAMOUS at around 2million at a guess. Right, so the lowest selling game, even if EVERYONE who bought it also owned the others will probably be DN at around 150,000(guessing but bear with me)so that means it's only POSSIBLE for 150,000(or however many people bought the lowest selling game) to own EVERY single game on the list for PS3 and I'm thinking I'm EVEN more rare for owning EVERY PSP title on the list. Sony have done amazingly well with the offer and as there's only a few of us in real terms who have all the games the moaning is, to me . way out of proportion and I suspect a LOT of people just wanted better(in their eyes) games because these are quite old and people would have bought them by now if they were interested enough.It's people being greedy and nothing else. I accept there will be a good few of us here that have all the games but, again, accept you are a tiny minority and Sony cannot possibly please everyone and the credit idea is a non starter. Be thankful it's back up and they have offered us all free plus and the chance of some free games even if it means you make a few bucks by selling a hard copy of LBP or Infamous.

I ,also, think for Sony to be offering any of us free stuff beyond a bit of reparation to DCU/Plus subscribers is beyond generous when they lost so much in such an unfair way themselves.

Bare fact of the matter is I'm happy to accept people here(we are very keen gamers so it's the kind of place you'd expect to find the very rare individuals who DO own all the games(like myself with the PSP-but even then that's a fluke cos I don't have a massive number of PSP games))own the full set but as i estimate it can only be around 50,000 or so people and definitely less than 1/100 PSN users who own the full set I'm tempted to thin a lot of those whining elsewhere are trying it on and DIDN'T ever own the games. It's not possible that that many ever did.

And as it's a TINY minority and Sony don't owe most of us anything why the eff are we complaining?

[trounbyfire]

most type i have seen on N4g ever

[goflyakite]

People have to realize that we are chatting on a gaming website. We aren't the majority of the industry.

Most of my friends IRL don't even have one of these games let alone all of them.

[news4geeks]

"but maybe this shows Sony doesn't really know their fanbase after all, because they're practically trying to give away the games the fans have already snapped up on release."

This is exactly why they are doing it. They know their fanbase full well. Intelligent offerings from sony, I'd offer pretty much the same if I worked for them. Offer old games because sales are slow on them now anyway and offer a game that is shortly due a AAA sequel.

[Cajun Chicken]

It is a tricky one, I admit, but I think the choice of 8 PS One Classics also would of been nice. Just you know, something good you'll buy rarely, also, the lack of Warhawk as a giveaway, missed marketing opportunity.

[GrieverSoul]

Warhawk shoul of been a nice offer. But the increase of possible traffic on the games servers would amount costs for Sony to cover. Its better to provide single player experiences. Much cheaper.

Also, Cajun, Dead Nation is a great game! You will love it! Trust me.

As for me, nothing of interest. I have all the 5 games. :(

[rob6021]

I think giving out primarily online or online only games would have been a massive unknown on if the servers would be able to handle it - they cannot predict how many people will actually take advantage of the deal and which games they'll get. In that stance it's pretty clear why MAG and Warhawk weren't given as options.

[AllyOmega]

So in the EU, Super Stardust HD gets replaced by Ratchet and Clank? Darn, I'm in the US, I just recently bought Super Stardust, and only one of the games on the list interests me (Infamous). If I could, Ratchet and Clank would be my 2nd choice. I guess I'll have to get LBP, but that game was never my cup o' tea.

[HolyOrangeCows]

SCEA
Why u no offer Quest for Booty?

Seriously, I want Quest for Booty, not SSd HD.

[coryok]

infamous has sold about 2.5 million copies, little big planet has sold something like 5 million (ps3 version). with 77 million people that leaves a lot of people who havnt bought these games (dont know about the rest, they didnt have retail releases and sony doesnt release sales statistics)

the people complaining that they have all these games have a reason to be angry, but theyre in the minority - theyre in the loud minority.

these are great games and everyone should get to play them, sonys offering a great line up.

if you want to compare, when microsofts xbox live went down for two weeks microsoft offereed their users one xboxlive game. if you already had it - too bad, that was for a paid service being down. sony is offering a selection of two games from five, and a bunch of other goodies, and thats for a free service going down.

sony is offering a fantastic amount of content for users to choose from. im sorry if you already have all the games, but sony owes you nothing else.

[flyingmunky]

I agreed but wanted to expand on what you said further. Its 77 million accounts, not people. The total number of consoles is around 40 million.

At any rate anyone who has all these titles should be in the minority. The problem is that we are on a games website where the vocal minority sounds a lot larger than it really is.

Also like you said when xbox live went down for 2 weeks only a single downloadable title was made free. This offer from Sony blows that offer out of the water.

For those that say its to make up for our identities being stolen; where is the news on that front? You better believe the media would have jumped at a story about identity theft being much higher for people who own ps3s. The media always seems to jump at any chance to smear Sony, even if they have to make crap up.

[coryok]

youre right, it is accounts, not people, thanks for the clarification!

btw, sony said a few weeks ago that they had sold 50 million ps3s

[kane_1371]

50 million PS3s, plus 60+ million PSP.
come on do the math.
not impossible to have more than 60mil accounts

[No FanS Land]

I have like 3 accounts myself

[goflyakite]

I didn't read this before posting but I 100% agree with flyingmunky.

[No FanS Land]

I don't remeber sony said 2 weeks ago their plan would include totally free games! I thought it would only be free PS+ content.

Anyway, I'll take infamous and Dead Nation as I don't own them. I'd have taken WipeOut HD/Fury but I already own the game without the expansion :/

As for the PSP games, I own KZ:L. Gonna take Modnation and LBP. I don't understand, was Pursuit force this good?

[No FanS Land]

double post.

[JMyers]

I have 2 PS+ accounts, and frankly I'm not too bothered about the free games. Yes I do own Infamous and LBP, and I'll happily take the free downloadables and the extra month of plus. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't see this as Sony's fault as they were attacked. For people to say that it should have never had happened could be said about every crime. Picture this... someone's set your neighbour's house on fire, and because they didn't call the fire department fast enough, your house burns as well... who do you blame? Your neighbour or the people that started the fire?

I am happy enough to get my lost PSN plus time. Sony owes me nothing otherwise as PSN is free. For people complaining about the free games, it is impossible to please everyone, and whatever was offered, they'd be people who would have already owned those games.

[unicronic]

I think you raise good points. I think also it is fair to say that after 2 years on the market a game has reached its critical mass via sales. Those who wanted it would have bought it.

An easier solution would have been to give a voucher / store credit