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After Outage, Sony Makes Peace Offering To Users of PlayStation Network
An anonymous reader notes that Sony is offering deals to make up for the downtime over Christmas. "PlayStation Network gamers didn't have such a happy holiday thanks to the reported handiwork of some hackers, so Sony is hoping to appease users of its online gaming service with promises of deals and discounts. For Playstation Plus subscribers, Sony is offering a 5-day membership extension, and for all members, a 10 percent discount at the PlayStation store, according to a blog post published Thursday. The PlayStation Network is Sony's online service for its PlayStation game console. Both PSN and Microsoft's online gaming service, Xbox Live, were intermittently offline beginning on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Xbox Live came back online first, with PSN following Saturday night."
There's no excuse for making gamers spend time with their families on Christmas, damn it.
Great strategy for Sony...
(1) Retroactive tax write-off
(2) Increased damages claims against the perpetrators
(3) Marketing opportunity
(4) Increased sales due to putative discount, front-loaded into the post-Christmas slump quarter
What's not to like about this for Sony?
It is lame and despite the fact that I generally feel complaining about "free" things is a dickbag move here is why this is insulting.
First off 10% off isn't a reward or sorry for gamers its a way for sony to try to recover lost revenue by enticing people to buy things they might not have.
Here's the real issue. What about people such as myself who already bought or received all the major releases? There is literally nothing for me to buy right now. Why can't this 10% off be in the form of a code that we can use any time we wish?
I already know the answer. Its because Sony doesn't care about people like me. They already got my money. As I said above they are only after making up lost revenue...revenue from people who are new or don't buy much content.
This appology is a backhanded insult and a way to pad Sony's bottom line. Anyone who believes otherwise is a fool.
Oh and 5 whole free days of psn..wow the joy. Psn is down constantly ddos or not. At least every other week there is an issue. All damn year its been like this. Really Sony owes us like 2 months of extension.
I won't be renewing my subscription its not worth it. Sony's setup is piss poor. Multiplayer is more laggy than Xbox live, download speeds are 1/4 of what Xbox live pushes out, it has less features, way less uptime and the "free" games they have offered have been terrible all year long.
Sorry sony but put relationship as far as psn goes is over. I paid for a year and a year was enough to see how you are not really serious about improving your network. Its no better than it was 5 years ago on ps3. While I don't like paying for live I can at least see the benefits to doing so. Fast speeds, dedicated servers, lag free multiplayer, chat that works, friends lists that actually load... Wtf sony?
On the other hand, I suspect that many Sony employees had a much less pleasurable time of cleaning up the mess.
Payback for the CD Rootkit they infected millions with is sweet irony. I cry tears of joy every time I hear about Sony getting hacked. No company deserves it more.