[PS3] PSN Welcome Back Program

Now that the Sony Playstation 3 PSN network is fully up and running again, have you logged in and taken advantage of the Welcome Back Program?

If not it is worth it. Log into the PSN Store and you will see a link to it from the right-hand side of the front page. For eligibility for the welcome back programme consumers must have been an account holder on 20 April 2011. All existing PSN registrants have 30 days from when the welcome back programme goes live to redeem their content.

What do you get:

30 Day PS Plus Subscription (for non subscribers) - Or if you are an existing subscriber you get 60 days free subscription added to your account (roughly what you lost during the downtime).

If you are not currently a "Plus" subscriber don't knock this because it will gain you access to the free and discounted Plus content in the store, and this month Sony are offering a completely free download of Burnout Paradise, which is a great bargain if you don't already own the game.

2 Free Commercial PS3 Games

Also on offer is the choice of 2 completely free commercial games from a selection of 5. These are all very good games and definitely worth taking advantage of this offer for. It's not so great if you already own all 5 of these games, but great if you don't.

In Europe the 5 games being offered are:

1. Infamous
2. LittleBigPlanet
3. Dead Nation
4. Wipeout HD/Fury
5. Ratchet and Clank: Quest for Booty

In the USA the selection is nearly the same, but with Super Stardust HD offered instead of Ratchet and Clank.

And in Germany Infamous and Dead Nation are replaced with Super Stardust HD and Hustle Kings.

A great selection of older titles you have to agree. And if you didn't already also own Burnout Paradise, with the free 30 day PS Plus subscription you are in effect really getting 3 full commercial games for free, plus some other mini and PS1 games from the PS Plus downloads.

2 Free commercial PSP games

If you also have a PSP registered with PSN then you also get to download 2 free commercial games from a selection of 4.

In Europe the games being offered are:

1. LittleBigPlanet PSP
2. ModNation PSP
3. Pursuit Force
4. Killzone Liberation

For the German market, Pursuit Force and Killzone Liberation will be replaced with Everybody's Golf 2 and Buzz Junior Jungle Party in the selection of PSP games. Killzone Liberation will not offer online gameplay functionality.

30 free days for Music Unlimited

For existing Music Unlimited subscribers, you will be given 30 days free subscription.

Obviously I won't need that :nogood:

True... but it does mean you can't play any games online, which is a bit of a restriction.

I know you don't play much online anyway so it's not a huge lose to you, but I personally like the ability to be connected, plus the addition of new content downloads for games, such as GT5 bonuses every time you log in, and time limited events.

But even saying all that. You must agree that Sony have offered a pretty good package as compensation to the downtime? Especially as they actually didn't need to as it wasn't their fault (other than their security not being good enough). I don't reckon you would see M$ offering as good an offer of Love went down.

I of course allready own all five of the free games. Well, I own Wipeout HD but not the Fury add-on so can get that at least.

Playstation Plus doesn't excite me much. Allright to get access to some discounts for a month of course. I allready have Burnout Paradise The Ultimate Box on Steam, so don't need that either. And I wonder about it being free, is it free in the same sense as all other free Playstation Plus content, ie that you only have access to it as long as you are a PSPlus subscriber? This is one reason it never interested me to subscribe to it in the first place.

All in all, it is as many people say, some great content on offer here. But it doesn't really offer much to the people who's really invested in the platform allready as they will allready own most of the content and not get the opportunity to get anything out of this offer. Why not for example include the option to exchange one or both free titles for £5 worth of store credit each or something? That'd make people like me happy too.

Oh well, you can't win them all. It is a great deal though and Sony should be commended for picking some quality titles to give away.

You could always sell the originals and then download the offered versions. And no, these games are not subscription limited and will allow you to keep playing them.

BTW, if you get the Fury upgrade let me know then we can play some 2 player games! ;)

Dave, are you sure that these games are not subscription limited? That means that if I will download such a game will be sit on my HD forever? Or it will say "goodbye" after the 30 free days?

And exactly, where I have to go to find them. Don't use PSN so much, very very scarce.

They are yours to keep forever on your HD. They won't expire.

To get them go to te PSN Store. Once it loads on the righthand side of the front page you should see a welcome back program advert. Select this and it will load a new page. The first download link should be for free games. Select this and I think if i remember correctly it went to another sub screen that lists the 5 games, plus a 6th option to register for the free games. You select this to then be able to download 2 of the 5 games. As soon as you activate the ability you download the games as you would normally in the PSN Store.

When this offer went live about a week ago the Store was very unstable due to the traffic and many people had problems getting the games that way. An alternative more stable method was to from the XMB choose Account Management -> Transaction Management -> Services List and then pick Playstation Network Promotions from that list. Should work better if the Store is still hard to get into.

And I was only wondering if Burnout Paradise was only free for Plus subscribers (it is), I know the five games in the Welcome Back offer is free for all forever. The offer is only available this month though, you have to go in and activate it before July I think, not sure of the exact date it ends.

Yes it is only valid for 30 days, and you are right about Burnout Paradise. It will only keep working whilst you have a Plus subscription active.

I think, but could be wrong, that the other method of accessing the promotion through the Account Manager will only work once you have activated the offer from the main store, then it appears in the accounts manager. I had to use that method after the network timed out whilst selecting the 2 games I wanted for the offer. Worked OK though using the manager to retrieve the offer and continue.

Thanks for the answers and tips mates. :)

Dave, I'm sure that you've downloaded such games to your HD. What's the average capacity of these games (an example)?

Saying that I bought my PS3 the first day it launched (March 2007), you can imagine that my HD is the 60GB one.

It depends on the game. For a full commercial release you would be looking at 2GB up to around 7GB. inFamous is just over 7GB so would eat into your 60GB HD space quite a bit.

It is really easy to swap your PS3 HD for a larger one though. 320GB 2.5" HDs can be purchased for around £35 these days, and using an external HD plugged into the PS3's USB ports you can select to backup the existing HD to the external drive, then swap the HDDs over and then copy the backups back over to the new drive. Not too hard.

Many people say it's easy to change HD. but i stiil have the question if you put other HD and then put the old one back, he will format it.
My 120GB is getting very short...
2GB to 7GB is the average size, but if you do "other stuff" with the PS3... you will get out of space very easly... :-)

Why would you want to put the old one back anyway?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Demon Cleaner

Why would you want to put the old one back anyway?

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Well, good question, i think i feel a bit secured if if have a Backup HD in case any thing goes wrong, i also want to try linux on it,
and with a backup of original HD i would fell more confident.... but if i take a good look about your question, i think you have the point :-)

You can easily backup the current HDD to an external HDD and restore it whenever you like, so there is really no need to a backup internal drive.