Top 10 Times PlayStation Angered Their Fans
#10: Goodbye, Mr. Butler
To push the Saturn, SEGA created a human mascot named Segata Sanshiro to promote their console. Sony pulled a similar move for the PlayStation 3 with Kevin Butler, a fictitious executive for Sony who acted as a mouthpiece for the PS3’s capabilities and games. For a time, Kevin Butler was almost synonymous with the PlayStation brand, but that era was more shortlived than SEGA and their hyperactive Segata Sanshiro. In 2012, Sony fired actor Jerry Lambert for appearing in a Bridgestone commercial that promoted the Nintendo Wii. Sony and Lambert would settle four months after the case was filed, and as part of their agreement, Lambert was barred from working in video game advertisements for two years. Fans have demanded his return since.
#9: Sony Pulls a Kinect Move
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In October 2020, players awoke to an alarming update; when users joined party chats, they were greeted with a message notifying them that Sony was recording said chats. No news of the feature had been announced before PlayStation 4’s were given their 8.0 system updates, and this outraged the community. SIE’s Vice President of Global Consumer Experience Catherine Jensen quickly clarified that this change was done as a means to properly investigate cases where abuse and harassment may be present. Jensen would further admit that they had not taken the proper steps in notifying players about this change and apologized.
#8: Grind Turismo 7
When it launched in March 2022, “Gran Turismo 7” was met with unrelenting praise for its graphics and technical fidelity, the only complaint being in its slow progression system. Well, we saw why it was slow shortly after reviews poured out and folks paid their seventy-dollar admission fee. Sony would update the game with microtransactions, and the playerbase quickly discovered the already grindy progression system had gotten worse. Couple this with obscene price tags for cars and a sudden need for exploitative strategies to farm currency, and you have a horrendous racing experience that suddenly did not deserve the perfect review scores. Man, the original “Gran Turismo” just got more appealing, didn’t it?
#7: “Believing” in Generations
In May 2020, Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Jim Ryan gave an interview to gamesindustry dot biz where he stated Sony “believes in generations”, further detailing how something like a next-gen console should include features its predecessor did not have. Fast-forward to September 2020 when the tech industry saw a chip shortage and Sony announced games that were once PS5-exclusive were also coming to PS4. Folks became confused and quickly pointed out Ryan’s contradiction. As for those wanting a PS5, players started asking what the point was in getting a PS5. This question has only intensified as more and more PS5 exclusives have made their way to not just PS4, but Sony’s competitors’ platforms, too.
#6: Horizon: Forbidden Purchase
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During the game’s launch week, Richard Hoeg of The Hoeg Law Firm put Sony on blast for how it displayed “Horizon: Forbidden West” on different platforms. Sony had prominently displayed the seventy-dollar PS5 version at the top of “Horizon’s” store page and shoved the cheaper PS4 version (which also came with the PS5 version) further down. Additionally, PS5 users were unable to purchase the PS4 version through the PS5 storefront. Even worse, Sony lied to customers in an FAQ, stating the only way to get both the PS4 and PS5 versions of “Forbidden West” was to buy the seventy-dollar Digital Deluxe version or other highly-priced packages. Hoeg, as well as many others, would describe this marketing as “deceptive”, and the lawyer further stated this could potentially result in a class-action lawsuit. Sony would adjust everything shortly after Hoeg’s video made news across gaming outlets.
#5: The PlayStation Sort-Of Classic
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With Nintendo seeing mild success with the NES and SNES Classic Edition, Sony must have thought, “Why don’t we do that?” And thus, the PlayStation Classic was born and fell flatter than a toddler playing a trumpet. Now, you too can experience the legendary titles that made PlayStation the brand it is today like the original “Grand Theft Auto”, blockbuster tactics RPG “Arc the Lad”, and the smash hit fighting game “Battle Arena Toshinden”! What was even more befuddling was some games, like “Tekken 3”, were only available in their PAL versions. This has since made fans concerned about which games Sony recognizes as its heritage, and it wasn’t long until folks began jailbreaking their consoles and filling them with actual PS1 classics.
#4: Everybody’s Working For the PS3
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In case you thought Sony was out of touch with the PlayStation Classic, let us remind you of the early days of Arrogant Sony. Having seen massive success with the PlayStation 2, Sony had the gall to price their newest console, the PS3, at six hundred US dollars!! When asked about the obscene price point, then-CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Ken Kutaragi claimed that players will work to buy a PS3. “For consumers to think to themselves, 'I will work more hours to buy one.' We want people to feel that they want it, irrespective of anything else." Throughout the seventh generation of gaming, the PS3 would constantly fall behind the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii in sales.
#3: Blocking, Stacking, Flakking
To promote the reformed PS Plus service, Sony announced in April 2022 that those with outstanding PS Now subscriptions after the fold will have their subscriptions translated to the highest tier of the new service, PS Plus Premium. This encouraged customers to start stacking subscriptions for PS Now at sixty bucks per year. However, Sony would block this ability over a month before the service reform, completely disabling the ability to redeem subscriptions until AFTER the new service launches. On top of that, Sony would cheat customers out of stacking by lowering the amount of time they'll get PS Plus Premium. Regardless of the length your voucher claims, you'll now only get roughly HALF of that subscription (one month equates to seventeen days, three months are one month two weeks, and one year equals six months three days). Oh, and after the revamp launched in Asia in May 2022, Sony tried to force users who stacked subscriptions to pay the difference in however much they saved!
#2: “Shutting Down” the PlayStation Store
In March 2021, Sony announced it would be shutting down the PlayStation Store for the PS3, PSP, and Vita platforms. This was met with immediate backlash as folks cried out about game preservation and how Sony has stranded hundreds of games between the three platforms. Sony would revert this decision about a month later, saying they’ll only shut down the PSP store. However, Sony would also make it fundamentally difficult to buy PS3 and Vita games moving forward. At the time of this video, the only way to buy games on those platforms is to login to your Sony account through a web browser or the PlayStation app, manually add funds to your account, and then make your purchase through the PS3 or Vita store. And yes, both of these stores are still about as stable as they were a decade ago.
FAKE #1: Marvel’s Puddle-Man
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How dare Insomniac take out a puddle from our sixty-dollar game!! This is blasphemous! This is a travesty! This is…stupid. Why was this ever a complaint? No, here’s our real number one…
#1: The 2011 PSN Hack
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Even today, Sony has not exactly recovered from this. In April 2011, the PlayStation Network was hacked, exposing the accounts of millions. Sony would spend weeks keeping the platform offline as they investigated alongside the United States government, but their communication to users was painfully slow. As the smoke slowly cleared and Sony finally felt ready to bring servers back online, the tech giant would compensate users by giving everyone thirty days of PlayStation Plus at no additional charge as well as two free games for PS3 and two more for PSP from a small pool of their own catalog.
