PSN freebies could hurt new games

Sony's apologetic PlayStation Network giveaway may cause further harm to studios whose games weren't released while the service was offline.

By offering two free downloadable PlayStation 3 games (from a choice of inFamous, LittleBigPlanet, WipEout HD/Fury, Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty and Dead Nation), Sony may unwittingly be taking yet more attention away from the already struggling-to-be-noticed newcomers.

"The issue is that everyone now gets games for free, so people might just play the free games for a while. By the time they are ready to buy something, Outland is maybe old news," Ilari Kuittinen, CEO of Outland (and Dead Nation and Super Stardust HD) developer Housemarque told Edge Online.

Outland has been released on Xbox Live Arcade already and was supposed to be released on PSN on 26th April. It is fantastic - Outland scored 8/10 on Eurogamer.

A further problem will be caused by Sony's flood of missed PSN content, which is rumoured to be returning in four bi-weekly clumps, starting Tuesday, 24th May.

"As a developer, I feel very sorry for those teams that did try to release their titles during the PSN outage window," an unnamed source confided.

"Beyond that, I feel sorry for those that are attempting to launch games in the days following the outage, as there will likely be such a backlog of traffic that it may be hard to be noticed in the flurry of 'get everything back up and running'."

Seed Studios, developer of Under Siege, also has reservations.

"We are all concerned with the overall situation but we think that despite all the delays and the multiple releases Under Siege will still stand out on its own," commented defiant producer Filipe Pina.

The PlayStation Store was taken down a month ago, on 20th April.