The fact is Sony owes PlayStation 3 gamers something for all of that lost time. Even if the PlayStation Network is inherently free, you assume you'll have continuous access to it when you acquire a PS3. Free online is part of the calculation many make when they purchase a PlayStation 3, after all. PSN Outage Timeline I made this argument immediately upon Sony's announcement of the Welcome Back program way back in early May, when I said that Sony wasn't doing enough. I met a strange amount of resistance from writing that piece, but I'm glad I did, because it appears that Sony was listening to my plea, and similar pleas from around the gaming sphere. The good news is that Sony is being quite generous with its Welcome Back program.

After refining and honing the original idea, Sony finally announced the details of the program yesterday. These details include two free PS3/PSN games out of a group of five, two more free PSP games out of a group of four, and other perks. So let's run down the list of freebies and discuss them a bit, shall we? The Free GamesWhen I took a look at the list of five free games Sony is offering to the PlayStation faithful, I was blown away. These aren't bottom-of-the-barrel choices. Rather, these are games from some of Sony's strongest development partners, including Sucker Punch, Media Molecule and Housemarque. Better yet, two of the five games are digital retail releases, meaning that they are worth quite a bit more than your standard PSN game. Do I think it would have been a better idea for Sony to put some cash into everyone's PlayStation Store wallets? I certainly do. This way, gamers could choose what games they wanted, and better yet, it would be most equitable to all of the developers who lost a boatload of money during the outage. But if Sony had to select a list of PlayStation-exclusives like they did, I'd be hard-pressed to find better games on the PSN to add. Haven't played Infamous yet? Now's your chance.Many of the complaints about these games stem from the fact that some already own them. Well, welcome to the club, because I own them all too. But that doesn't mean these aren't good games. In fact, they're great games, and a vast majority of PSN users won't own any of them, nonetheless all of them. Choosing any two of them will make a plethora of PlayStation 3 owners very happy, and that's what counts. Here's what we're dealing with. Dead Nation (IGN Score: 7.5) Infamous (IGN Score: 9.2) LittleBigPlanet (IGN Score: 9.5) Super Stardust HD (IGN Score: 8.7) WipeOut HD + Fury (IGN Score: 9.2) As you can see, IGN thought very highly of these games. The average score between the five choices is 8.8, or the high end of the "Great" scale. And when you factor in that you could potentially get two retail games for free (or two of three awesome PSN games, or any permutation therein), you realize how great of a deal this actually is. Play LBP on the go. For free!But the better news is that there are PSP games to choose from as well, and like the PSN titles, you can take any two of the games available. LittleBigPlanet PSP (IGN Score: 9.0) ModNation Racers PSP (IGN Score: 7.4) Pursuit Force (IGN Score: 8.4) Killzone Liberation (IGN Score: 9.0) While slightly lower, the average score of the PSP titles is 8.45, right in the middle of the "Great" scale. And better yet, these are all retail games. There aren't any discount or PlayStation Mini titles here. There's really nothing at all to complain about here. Moving on. PlayStation PlusThe editorial I wrote several weeks ago talked at length about the inherent unfairness of Sony's original PlayStation Plus reimbursement idea. Initially, Sony intended on giving everyone 30 free days of PlayStation Plus due to the outage. If the company stuck to this plan, the 24 day outage would have meant that non-PS+ subscribers would have gotten 30 free days, and PS+ subscribers would have gotten six days (due to the lost time). This isn't only unfair, but it makes zero sense. Thankfully, that's not the plan as it stands in its final form. Sony mentioned a while ago that PlayStation Plus subscriptions were frozen during PSN's downtime, meaning that no time was taken away from subscriptions during the outage. With that said, everyone that doesn't subscribe to PlayStation Plus will get 30 free days of the service. Those who are already subscribers will get 60 days free to add to the end of any given subscription time.