When PSN is back online, Sony may reward gamers for PS3 outage patience

Written by Matt Swider on April 30, 2011

News: The one upside to PlayStation Network still being down is that we may get a freebie out of the whole situation.

This is the second weekend in a row that everyone's PS3 is an offline console instead of an online gaming and cross-media powerhouse. Worse, the risk of identity theft and fraud thanks to the possibility stolen credit card numbers by hackers has many gamers questioning their loyalty to the PlayStation brand. Sony, obviously seeing the error of its ways in failing to alert its consumers of the personal identity theft when the network went down on April 20, may try to make up for it with a free gift.

Sony's second round of FAQs stated that the company is "evaluating ways to show appreciation for your extraordinary patience as we work to get these services back online." Gaming Target mused about this possibility a week ago, coming up with five perks that Sony could bestow upon gamers. Most of them were not freebies, but reassurances so that everyone's personal data isn't going to be stolen a second time around.

Still, Microsoft's gift of the XBLA game Undertow when Xbox Live was down in 2007 inspired us to include one free downloadable game for those of us who have been affected. We felt as if Flower was the ideal game - small and already a hit on the PS3 - for P.O.'d PSN users. Given the temperament of impatient gamers right now, it's soothing gameplay and majestic soundtrack make it the perfect free PSN game.

There's no guarantee that there'll be a perk if that it'll be a game, but I know that a lot of angry and/or bored online videogame lovers are crossing their suddenly freed up fingers for just that. What perk are you looking forward to if Sony comes through with a goodwill gesture? Comment below: