Sony Responds to Criticisms of PlayStation Network's 'Welcome Back' Lineup

After promising to earn back some goodwill with the community through a little thing called "free stuff," Sony yesterday detailed its "Welcome Back" plan for the return of PlayStation Network. There are some terrific games being made available at no charge, but if you already own all of them, that's a bummer.

The head of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe's communications division, Nick Caplin, actually responded to a fan who expressed their disappointment over this very issue on the PlayStation Blog.

"I’m really sorry tha [sic] there is nothing there that you want," explained Caplin. "We’ve tried really hard to put together a list of high quality BD [Blu-ray disc] games, rather than simply offering cheaper PSN titles. The average metacritic rating for these games is over 84%, so these are high quality games. Unfortunately with a user base of 77m people, it is really hard to offer something for everyone."

If you've already forgotten what games are in the "Welcome Back" package, I've got you covered.

PlayStation 3

• LittleBigPlanet
• Infamous*
• Wipeout HD/Fury
• Super Stardust HD
• Dead Nation

PSP

• LittleBigPlanet
• ModNation
• Pursuit Force
• Killzone Liberation

Thats rough

Kinda half-assed response.

sigh

Wow...

You know, I had your back all this time Sony, but this is fucked up. Come on. The line-up is certainly good, and definitely games I want to get, but they are also extremely well performing games, except maybe Dead Nation. The fact that they just said "sorry" is total bullshit. People should be able to just get a PSN credit equivalent to whatever everyone else is getting or something. Or they should at least expand the list.

To bad they are thrying

It's all right. I only own Super Stardust HD so I'll be taking advantage of all the other games offered, my brother also has an account so I'll be getting 8. 

Kinda half-assed response.

sorry?

lol

The moment metacritic was mentioned, I started laughing.

They offered what they could. They weren't going to make everyone happy anyway. I don't even have a PSP, but I'll be happy with my inFamous and Little Big Planet.

They are good games, but the fact that they're quite old means that it would almost be better to offer downloadable games. You can get LBP for about £8-10 these days, and inFamous for not much more. Luckily I don't have Wipeout or Dead Nation, so I'll be grabbing those.

Edit: Just to say I'm certainly not complaining, this is more than I would have asked of them. Just found it strange that they said they wanted to offer full games rather than "cheaper PSN titles" and yet they picked games old enough that you can get them cheaper than the PSN titles anyway.

"I’m really sorry tha [sic] there is nothing there that you want," explained Caplin. 

its a response that makes sense, but it would also be cool to have them look at the sales numbers for the products and suss out a product that had a high metacritic rating, but a lower overall gain in monetary value. To allow them to set up a user base for future installments.

I'm of the opinion that if you actually own every one of the games they're offering, your disposable income is large enough that getting free shit shouldn't be an issue.

He just said sorry that our "we are sorry" package is meaningless to you. I get that they can't honestly know what games everyone owns, but there should be some option for those that already own every game you are giving to try and make up for this, or else the whole point of doing this is meaningless to those people.

As someone who only bought infamous im ready to play LBP and Stardust

No Sony, it is not hard to offer something for everyone. It is really easy in fact. Just put some money on our PSN wallet. Voilà, everyone's pleased.

People are so ungrateful. 

oh  sony....... you  definitely need a better PR team lol

I don't own any of them! So I think this is pretty cool.

They could've just said "here's some money in your Playstation wallet, buy whatever you want"

I think the reason they have chosen great games is because they know everyone has them, so not many people will benefit from this give-away, yet from the outside it makes Sony look really good.

The only game I do not have with the PS3 list offered, is Dead Nation.

I don't see what the big deal is. The network is back (partially) and any time you paid for (PSN+) will be refunded and extended. I'm not a Sony apologist (in fact, I've been about as harsh as anyone on their pathetic security and even more pathetic handling of the situation), but I just don't see what we need extra little goodies for. I'd rather they keep their trinkets and invest any money they'd have spent on it in hiring new security professionals for the future.

That said, the game choices they had were - as described - very highly rated. Chances are that if you offer some of the most popular titles on your service to people, those people are already going to own them. You know, because they were so popular to begin with. It'd be like Microsoft offering Gears of War and Halo and everyone saying "but we already have those!". If they had listed a bunch of stuff that nobody had (and therefore was probably not terribly good), people would be pissed that they were just offloading crap on them.

I don't plan to download anything, because I already have everything except one item and I don't care about that one item enough to be bothered. I'd just be happy to see the fucking PSN fully back, so I can actually apply the redemption codes to the games I bought before the outage that I'm trying to play right now.

Wait, ModNation Racers was released on the PSP?

@Novyx said:

Kinda half-assed response.

What else can he say though? He speaks the truth!

awesome only own lbp

The moment metacritic was mentioned, I started laughing.

It's a lineup of terrific games. I also own all of those except Killzone and Pursuit Force, but I'm not bitching about it. Maybe I'm being too reasonable, though. It's one thing to demand that you get free stuff because Sony got attacked. It's a lot worse to complain that this list of free stuff isn't good enough for you. 

I own all of these already, sigh.

They should've offered a choice of any two Sony developed/published games available on PSN. Not a list of of games that most people already own..

Come on. Microsoft gave us Undertow for their two week downtime.

It's free games, in reality they owe us nothing.

People need to be grateful for the free stuff.

If they're worried about losing money, just provide a credit of some amount that can be put toward games at least a year old.   Everybody wins.

considering most people thought that it would be psn only titles, and some even believed that they would only let you keep them while you had your 30 days of psn+, i cant believe that people are still complaining considering the line up has full games, and good ones at that, and you get two for ps3 and psp, what sony has offered is way above what most people expected and it is too bad if you have all those games but you could get them an give them to someone else that you know so they can get the whole set.  when the line up of FREE GAMES is this good complaining seems a tad bit ridiculous 

The thing that rankles most, at least for some of us, is the fact that most of these titles have been either heavily discounted or just plain given out for free to Playstation Plus subscribers recently so chances are that those core customers who plough cash into Sony are being cast aside in favour of drumming up new business.

I'm not sure what people are expecting. If they had put up less popular games, people would complain, so they put up some of the really popular games, and people /still/ complain. 

What I can't believe is that they offer LBP and InFamous. Those games HAS to be some of the best selling and the fact those are being made available free is just... weird. And then there's the fact that IF2 is released soon. But, meh, I don't know, thought there was going to be more of an offer after this huge mess.

I don't own InFamous though, so I'll be happy with that.

They offered what they could. They weren't going to make everyone happy anyway. I don't even have a PSP, but I'll be happy with my inFamous and Little Big Planet.

A selection of 10 games to choose 2 from would have been better. 5 is fine, but yeah, you're going to have people who have them all.  I have 2 of them, so not a huge deal to me, but a smaller pool makes it more likely that you'll have people who already own everything you're offering.

Honestly, other than just throwing money in peoples' PSN wallets, which is crazy and is not going to happen, Sony's never going to satisfy everyone. It's unfortunate, but there you go. If you've ever spent 2 seconds following any one politician, you already know what that feels like.

Would have been nice to have the whole Sony catalog minus the newest ones on the list.

I was fine with what they offered, but it's when they just make shit up like this that I get really angry. They "tried really hard" to offer solid disc-based games? So they picked LBP1 and Infamous? So the other 3 are downloadable titles? That doesn't seem like they tried at all! "Let's offer the two titles that the majority of our 77M users probably own, and some other downloadable stuff too!"