Thursday , March 28 2024
Sony's Welcome Back package means nothing to the hardcore fans of the platform.

Open Letter to Sony: “Welcome Back” Program for Casual Fans Only

Sony and its PlayStation brand are not having a good spring. On April 19th they discovered a network intrusion which was incredibly malicious and caused them to shut down the PlayStation Network and associated services on April 20th. After numerous scandals, delays, and significant bad press Sony finally restarted the core PSN services on May 14th.  Sony also promised a “Welcome Back” package would be announced as an apology and reward for loyal fans.  The problem is the Welcome Back package is designed for casual PlayStation users and means next to nothing to hardcore fans.

I have sent this open letter to Sony ([email protected]), Jack Tretton ([email protected], President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America), and Patrick Seybold ([email protected], Senior Director, Corporate Communications & Social Media at Sony Network Entertainment) and encourage all others who feel the same as I do to forward their own letters:

Hello, I hope that you will read my e-mail and comment back or at least forward it to a group that can address my concerns.

First off, I do appreciate that Sony is giving something away as an apology for the severe outage sustained last month. What I do not appreciate is that the welcome back program is obviously targeted to casual PlayStation users instead of the loyal or hardcore fans like myself.

People like me who buy all cross Platform games on the PS3 even though I have an Xbox 360.

People like me who buy all exclusives day one, games like inFamous, LittleBigPlanet, Wipeout HD, Dead Nation, and Super Stardust HD.

People like me who can show you a games list that is over 80 strong.

People like me who get absolutely nothing from your Welcome Back package.

I can plainly see that Sony felt it was better to please its casual fan base than the diehard Sony fans like myself. Once again I naively felt Sony would look at rewarding its most loyal fans. I was naively hoping for an open reward program, not a program that means nothing to people who truly believed in the PlayStation brand and supported it with their hard earned money like I did. I naively hoped that we could choose our own reward, receive PSN credits, choose DLC, anything except a closed list.  In the end I was simply naive.

I would greatly appreciate hearing back from someone letting me know how the hardcore fans of the PlayStation family are being welcomed back, because this list only gives my own leftovers back to me.

Regards,

Michael Prince

About Michael Prince

A longtime video game fan starting from simple games on the Atari 2600 to newer titles on a bleeding edge PC I play everything I can get my hands on.

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