While North America and Europe have had partially restored PlayStation Network connectivity for a (relatively) solid couple of weeks now, Asian PS3 owners have been sitting idly by, waiting for news of some kind of restoration plan. Now that news is here, and it's mostly good... I think.
Similar to how things relaunched in other territories, several Asian countries, including Japan and Taiwan, will be able to connect to PSN starting tomorrow. Players will be able to play games online, sign in to change login/password info, and, thank the heavens, access to PlayStation Home.
The only territories still sitting on the sidelines will be Korea and Hong Kong, which Sony promises will be restored "as soon as ready."
Also like the rest of the world, Asian countries will be forced to wait a little longer for the PlayStation Store to pop back up, but when it does, they'll have their own unique set of "Welcome Back" freebies to choose from. Asian players will be able to download two of the following PS3 titles:
PSP owners can download two of the following titles as well:
== TEASER ==- Yuhshanokuseninamaikida or2 PSP® the Best (What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord!? 2)
- Everybody’s Stress Buster
- PATAPON2 PSP® the Best
- LittleBigPlanet Portable
- LocoRoco -Midnight Carnival-
Customers will additionally receive 30 free days of PlayStation Plus, some free selected movie rentals, a month-long free membership to Weekly Toro Station, and their own "special personal space" in Home, which will be detailed later.
No word yet on the restoration of the PlayStation Store, but Sony does have more maintenance scheduled for next week. Just a reminder that next week marks the May 31st deadline that various people have alternately said was and wasn't Sony's official cut-off for getting all PSN services restored. I'm not holding my breath, but is anyone out there banking on everything being back at full capacity by next week?