This is where PlayStation needs to improve. We were expecting March's roster of PlayStation Plus freebies to be announced last week, but the platform holder failed to deliver an update. This wasn't so bad, as SCEE's ever approachable Fred Dutton provided a line of communication with European consumers, eventually indicating that we'd see the offering this week. As such, many had expected that it would reveal the titles today – the goodies are due to deploy tomorrow in North America, after all – but the company's since gone into radio silence mode.
Of course, we've been here before, haven't we? When the PlayStation Network was down over Christmas, the company failed to provide any meaningful updates for days, leaving sites like this one to handle the platform holder's public relations for it. To be fair, the Twitter account for PlayStation France – of all places – has said that we'll see the full lineup tomorrow, but we're working on a shaky translation to share that information. We understand that the organisation doesn't want to disappoint anyone, but would it have been so hard to post that snippet in English, too?
The net result of all of this is that mock-up images are appearing all over the web, the majority of which look like hoaxes. And people are, sadly, being pulled in by them – all because the manufacturer seems utterly unable to share information with its fans. We appreciate that there are plenty of cogs in a corporation of this size, and we also realise that announcing the latest selection of complimentary Instant Game Collection software isn't a matter of life or death – but the firm's silence is so frustrating sometimes. When will it learn?
[source twitter.com]
Comments 37
@KratosMD Haha, fair point! And I agree - it's the whole company. Sometimes, they just go into lockdown mode, and it drives me up the wall. Clearly the people that were providing updates have been told to keep quiet, but to what end? I remember when DriveClub wasn't working, the game's director was providing updates on Twitter - and then he got told to stop. It drives me mad.
I genuinely believe that if they communicated properly, 99% of people wouldn't care. Instead, though, we get this silence; it could all be avoided with a simple post saying: "Hey all, we've hit a stumbling block and we're working hard to overcome it. We expect to solve it on Day X, and we'll have more information then."
Gah! I just can't understand it.
Honestly I see where you're coming from but I personally take the "I'll see it when it's there" approach with news, psplus lineups and games as a whole alike. I don't need to know in advance whats coming, when I'll see it when its there...
@Scollurio That's perfectly fine and rational, but they set the expectation that they'd announce the update on the last Wednesday of every month. If they can't hit that, it's fine - these things are hard - but it's important they then say: "Hey, we're really sorry, we're not quite ready this time. This is why, this is what we're doing to fix it, and this is when you can expect more information."
I don't want to make it sound like it's a simple solution 'cos, like I say, I'm sure there are lots of moving parts - but they have to do better.
@get2sammyb and @BLPs ... I hear you, I hear you and yeah I read about that announcement about the upcoming announcement last week! Im with you, totally. Just personally, I really don't mind. And about the financial planning aspect - those games are up a month, I don't think knowing in advance a few days makes much of a difference.
couldn't agree on a contract or something? what kinds of things could hold this up?
Well after The Order: 1886(still playing it & it's still brilliant) last month, SONY has to give the moaners something to moan about this New month i guess
Oh well, I can wait. I won't be installing anything else really until my 2TB internal drive I ordered from Amazon shows up anyway. I don't wanna download all those freebies, only to have to reinstall them next week. It'll be a pain just to reinstall all my disk games. I might need to go to a buddy's house in town where his connection is lightning fast.
The weird thing is they would have to know by now correct ? Or is it possible that some deal turned sour and now they are scrambling to find a replacement game or something ? Not sure how these things go down, it's just odd that on the day before , there's still nothing.... Unless of coarse we get the "...delayed another week" treatment
@Carl-G
It's not 'moaning' it's a legitimate complaint.
I wonder if Sorny was keeping the march ps plus list along with that list of anniversary winners they lost.
They seem to be trying their best not to offer their own games for free. Its obviously gonna be very good or very bad. Its March... ...
Sony you had better have some big surprise for us.
But aren't we getting said free games tomorrow most likely?
I hope that OlliOlli 2 is free for PS+! Want to try it really badly.
"Expect more information tomorrow, maybe"
Call me.
Seeing as it's now Tuesday, the store should update in NA, meaning that an announcement of some sort has to happen.
I reckon Helldivers pulled out and they've been scrabbling to find something else. If that's the case then I can see why both companies aren't talking about it.
The devs aren't going to say "you were going to get this free but we want your money" and Sony won't say "we tried to get you this for free but those guys wanted more money and we couldn't afford it".
Either statement looks bad, so I reckon we'll get an apology but no explanation.
Posted this to another topic but here I post agin.
I have seen a lot of unprofessional behavior from Sony in the last few years. And each unprofessional behavior added even more amateurish problems instead of making the brand stronger. So therefor something as small as March PS Plus line up not being unveiled although we are at March, is just another one of these issues. There is no communication whatsoever with this company.
Also what might have gone wrong? Did a publisher backup from their offer? If so I have concerns such as if plus is really a good deal for the publishers and if the service's quality games will continue or not. A company as strong and powerful like Sony needs to know the March line up by the beginning of February. There should not be any last minute tweaks.
there must have been some incident that affected the March line-up...
Delaying the inevitable, the storm.
Maybe they still don't know what games to put in. Or maybe they are still testing the servers so they can put Driveclub in it
If its not an absolutely incredible lineup then I wouldn't want to be Chris Howe! I actually feel bad for that guy. He's sort of the face of plus and once a month gets shouted at by hundreds of people.
Oh god, so Sony hasn't announced the IGC lineup yet....
This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
What do you mean, "biblical"?
What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...
The dead rising from the grave!
Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
I couldn't care if the games are announced a day, a week, a month or not at all before the moment they're available. Personally I think they should always just go up on the first Wednesday of the month and be done with it. What I do care about is if Sony say "we announce them a week before" then you do it. It isn't hard. If there is a problem then say so, rather than sticking your head in the sand.
What is annoying is how these negotiations are sorted months in advance, we're told, yet last week there was still "i's to do dot, and t's to cross." A week on - and just hours before launch - nothing still. It's unprofessional, which is a word you can use to describe Sony an awful lot recently. You can care or not care about not knowing the games yet but the simple, cold, hard truth is Sony are once again treating their customers like they couldn't give a toss about them. We know that isn't true but that is how they're coming across. Again.
It will be interesting to see if they do give a reason for the delay when they finally announce the lineup. I can only imagine two possible reasons for the delay:
1. A developer pulled out of a deal leaving a hole in the lineup
2. They want to "surprise" us with some AAA PS4 freebie (probably driveclub which won't be a surprise when it arrives as I suspect a very large chunk of PS+ subscribers probably paid for the full version by now as it's been available for sub £20 for some time).
My guess is it's the first reason. I can't imagine publishers get loads of money for "featuring" their games on the PS+ monthly lineup as Sony needs to keep some of the PS+ subs for running PSN. So the negotiations between Sony and the dev companies can't always finish with both parties feeling like they got a good deal. I do wonder how many devs have been burned in the past by PS+ deals and whether this is causing problems for Sony when they try to put together the monthly PS+ lineup.
I'm sure there's some room for some investigative journalism here (hint hint!) into how PS+ deals are put together. I'd be interested to learn whether development companies are forced to sign up to offer their titles as PS+ freebies in the future as a condition of being able to list a new title in the store. Also, how much they get paid for, say, an indie PS+ listing, whether they get paid per download, etc.
Anyway that's just my two penneth. I guess only time will tell whether we find out what caused this month's delays...
This is what annoys me the most about Sony, when something happens like this I'm patient enough to wait it out but when they totally go silent and don't even bother to answers peoples questions about what's going on or when the problem will be resolved is what really annoys me.
Ps+ in Europe supposedly leaked..octodad and lego Marvel super heroes
@teknium_ Didn't read the article, did you? "The net result of all of this is that mock-up images are appearing all over the web, the majority of which look like hoaxes. And people are, sadly, being pulled in by them" Octodad and Lego Marvel included.
As I said in the forum discussion I hope it's Lego Hobbit so it forces TT Games to give us the sodding Five Armies DLC that they promised us nearly a year ago would be coming.
@rastamadeus I did read the article yea..wasnt meant to be posted as it was..i wanted to add that yes I know it's just someone's guess on another site I was reading..but i think those two games would be a good call
@KratosMD ah..i didnt realise it was on sale..ive been in the Philippines since October(heading back to UK in a few days) and I haven't checked the ps 4 store very often(sill managed to get the ps+ games tho!) just been using my vita for the past few months
@get2sammyb some people are receiving emails with a plus renewal mail. It states that dishonoured for ps3 and olliolli are free (don't know if it's vita or ps4 for but it's crossbuy)
I thought the IGC was ment to be released today to be honest, is it next week?
@KratosMD Wouldn't be the first time a game that was just on sale was added to PS+, especially if one game did get pulled at the last minute.
@get2sammyb Different subject, but same issue.
Remember Payday 2? The response to questions about patches for consoles was always "its coming".
Then weeks of silence before "its coming".
That is what destroyed the reputation of Overkill on consoles.
Still no word from Sony on this months games? They are obviously having a hard time agreeing with some dev/publisher whatever fees they pay them?!
I agree with Sammy in that Sony need to work on becoming more communicative and transparent with their business. Being kept in the dark is not what consumers like and for a company as large as Sony (with so many personnel) there should be no excuse for a lack of communication in this day and age of Twitter, Blogs, Email etc etc...
This reminds me of the Driveclub fiasco, Sony being dead silent while the fans were the ones who suffered. Hopefully we'll see the games up today.
Perhaps Ground Zeroes is one of the free games, the PS4 game & they were waiting on the release date of Phantom Pain & were having some back & forths with Konami? The IGN/countdown clock got busted & we now know TPP is coming Sep 1st (!!!!!!)
If MGS GZ is the free game I want a cookie...especially as I already own it on both systems =P
@Pipr YES! An article on how the deal go down would be excellent, I have wnodered the very same things myself
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...