Sony To Rollout A ‘Welcome Back’ Program In The Wake Of The PSN Outage
Sony has announced via the PlayStation Blog that they plan to issue a “Welcome Back” Program to all users affected by the PlayStation Network outage that has been going on over the past couple of weeks. The company states that some PSN/Qriocity services should be up this coming week. There won’t be a major boot of all network features, but the important ones are set to come back online.
Here’s what users can look forward to this week:
- Restoration of Online game-play across the PlayStation®3 (PS3) and PSP® (PlayStation®Portable) systems
-This includes titles requiring online verification and downloaded games - Access to Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity for PS3/PSP for existing subscribers
- Access to account management and password reset
- Access to download un-expired Movie Rentals on PS3, PSP and MediaGo
- PlayStation®Home
- Friends List
- Chat Functionality
Along with the restoration of these network features, Sony has added some much-needed security measures to the network as a countermeasure against intrusions. Automated security monitoring has been implemented to help defend against new attacks, and there have been enhancements to data protection and encryption. There have been enhancements for detecting software intrusions, and the network now has additional firewalls. Sony is fairly assured that these new measures will help in stopping issues like these from ever happening again.
The Welcome Back program that Sony is offering is pretty standard. Here’s a brief rundown of how it will work:
- Each territory will be offering selected PlayStation entertainment content for free download. Specific details of this content will be announced in each region soon.
- All existing PlayStation Network customers will be provided with 30 days free membership in the PlayStation Plus premium service. Current members of PlayStation Plus will receive 30 days free service.
- Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity subscribers (in countries where the service is available) will receive 30 days free service.
More complimentary services are expected to come, according to Sony, along with these mentioned. No specific date has been given yet as to when the network will be back up, but I would assume it would be around Tuesday as that’s when the usual maintenance takes place. For more information head to the PlayStation Blog.
