As services return, Sony details North American PSN 'Welcome Back' program

After its long hacker-induced outage, PSN / Qriocity / SOE services are back, and although some of the details of Sony's "Welcome Back" program were previously made clear (for example, 30 days free membership in the PlayStation Plus premium service), Sony also added that additional “Welcome Back” entertainment and service offerings will be rolled out over the coming weeks as full functionality returns, tailored to each region. Sony has announced the details of the program for the North American region.

The package won't be available until all services are fully restored. The details are below:

All PlayStation Network customers can select two PS3 games from the following list. The games will be available [for free] for 30 days shortly after PlayStation Store is restored and can be kept forever.

• Dead Nation
• inFAMOUS
• LittleBigPlanet
• Super Stardust HD
• Wipeout HD + Fury

For PSP owners, they can download two PSP games from the following list. Just as with the PS3 games, the games will be available for 30 days shortly after PlayStation Store is restored and can be kept forever.

• LittleBigPlanet (PSP)
• ModNation Racers
• Pursuit Force
• Killzone Liberation

• A selection of “On Us” rental movie titles will be available to PlayStation Network customers over one weekend, where Video Service is available. Those titles will be announced soon.
• 30 days free PlayStation Plus membership for non PlayStation Plus subscribers.
• Existing PlayStation Plus subscribers will receive an additional 60 days of free subscription.
• Existing Music Unlimited Premium Trial subscription members will receive an additional 30 days of free premium subscription.
• Additional 30 days + time lost for existing members of Music Unlimited Premium/Basic subscription free of charge for existing Premium/Basic members.
• To welcome users Home, PlayStation Home will be offering 100 free virtual items. Additional free content will be released soon, including the next addition to the Home Mansion personal space, and Ooblag’s Alien Casino, an exclusive game.

Naturally, you can't please everyone. Some gamers are disappointed by the options. SCEE's Nick Caplin commented in response to a complaint on the European PlayStation Blog that:

"I’m really sorry that there is nothing there that you want. 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."

Via: Playstation Blog