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Sony will refund consumers over deceiving PlayStation Vita ads
- Thread starter Takao
- Start date
I knew what the machine did when I bought it. Admittedly I'm an enthusiast.
I saw the ads and felt they were kind of deceptive.
I don't see a problem with them being punished by having to give... credit to spend on more Sony products.
And I truly don't understand all the people who are so... upset about them being punished.
I'll gladly take the credit and spend it.
I knew what it did, and I'll gladly take the 50 dollar credit. Not my problem they didn't think their ads through.
I'd argue one has to be one heck of a fan of a Company to not use a credit they are given based on a legitimate case against a company.
There's nothing morally wrong here. There's no fraud or taking advantage of someone. They're willingly paying for something that has been found, by law, to be necessary.
If Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, etc..etc...misled people, I'd claim my refund/credit to help push that these companies need to be more honest.
FaintDeftone
Junior Member
I bought a Vita at launch. Hopefully I'll get hooked up. I would just be happy with a year of PS+
Normally I give companies the benefit of the doubt on things but I fail to see why anyone should be outraged about getting $50 in PSN credit for Sony, you're just going to be spending it on more stuff from them so I'm happy that myself and the other righteous few early adopters who believed in the power of the Vita are getting a nice perk.
D:
mocolostrocolos
Member
You serious?
Can I have the free money then
piratethingy
Self professed bad raider
They ran an ad showing Killzone 3 and implied you could play it on your Vita via Remote Play, a feature that essentially never existed.
If Nintendo ran an add today for a new Wii Slim and at the end ran a bunch of highlights of Mario 3D World, Smash Bros Wii U, Etc. People would rightfully freak out.
You can't run adds for a video game system showing games that system cannot and never will be able to play.
Sony abandoned it but a lot of publishers didn't. A lot of great games are being released for it, just not first-party ones.
Anyway, I did get my Vita on May 2012. If I get the mail, nice. But I won't get my hopes up.
BiGBoSSMk23
A company being excited for their new game is a huge slap in the face to all the fans that liked their old games.
Was it a lie though? I saw the MLB ad cited, and by my definition of deceit, they're more guilty of ineffectively communicating the specifics of the Cross Play function than of literally (and I mean literally) telling consumers that any PS3 game can be carried out on the go.
Unintentional ambiguity is a result of a poorly produced ad.
The line between being ambiguous and deliberately misleading is a very thin one.
Brutalitops
Banned
I can't believe people are defending and refusing to take the money of a big corporation who doesn't give them a second thought
#4theplayers amirite?
TetraGenesis
Member
I just realized that I bought my first Vita used so I won't be eligible. Gahhhhhhddammit.
CamHostage
Member
I guess it's a fair victory, but as far as video game companies overhyping, this seems to be an unusually slim case to me. The way people read the features out of the ad seems wildly differing, and unlike a lot of these cases, the truth was out there. (And the idea that 3G was "oversold" as a feature, I feel like it was lack of interest on the consumer side as much as Sony's lack of toolkit investment that killed that. If 3G had been a major factor for Vita I'm sure Sony would have gotten behind it much more than it did, but there's a reason everybody literally groaned when AT&T was announced as the partner and already by the time of launch 3G was only a factor because people had to decide whether the extra $50 would ever pay off.)
Hard to say how this will go in the future. Maybe this will help keep companies honest, and maybe we'll see class-action suits about bullshots and dropped features taken seriously. Or maybe we'll see something like the patent troll flurry where suits rain for every slighted incident (which would serve some of these companies right, but some of the good companies could be caught up as victims, like if somebody proves that No Man's Sky would take less than 5 billion years to actually see every permutation, would that go to court?) It's a win for today, we'll see where things go from here.
But did they? I know they had the Remote Play tech demo at TGS 2011 that used Killzone, but those tech demos usually have that caveat about being just a tech demo. I don't recall it ever being "advertised" as a game that would actually launch such a feature (I got the feeling that they just never bothered finishing the hack work because K3 was a disappointment and attention already turned to KZ SF.) There were later PS3 games that came out with Remote Play compatibility, although that was a small quantity (and really, Sony almost never advertised it as a feature in a game itself, so you would never know unless you browsed a wiki; even when titles like Lair shipped and were compatible with PSP remote play, that was never on official specs.) It wasn't until PS4 when the potential was fulfilled. Even if some titles delivered on PS3, Killzone 3 was not one of them, but I'm still not sure where it was "advertised" as such (or who these Killzone 3 buyers were who were waiting for that feature, but that's another story...)
Hard to say how this will go in the future. Maybe this will help keep companies honest, and maybe we'll see class-action suits about bullshots and dropped features taken seriously. Or maybe we'll see something like the patent troll flurry where suits rain for every slighted incident (which would serve some of these companies right, but some of the good companies could be caught up as victims, like if somebody proves that No Man's Sky would take less than 5 billion years to actually see every permutation, would that go to court?) It's a win for today, we'll see where things go from here.
But did they? I know they had the Remote Play tech demo at TGS 2011 that used Killzone, but those tech demos usually have that caveat about being just a tech demo. I don't recall it ever being "advertised" as a game that would actually launch such a feature (I got the feeling that they just never bothered finishing the hack work because K3 was a disappointment and attention already turned to KZ SF.) There were later PS3 games that came out with Remote Play compatibility, although that was a small quantity (and really, Sony almost never advertised it as a feature in a game itself, so you would never know unless you browsed a wiki; even when titles like Lair shipped and were compatible with PSP remote play, that was never on official specs.) It wasn't until PS4 when the potential was fulfilled. Even if some titles delivered on PS3, Killzone 3 was not one of them, but I'm still not sure where it was "advertised" as such (or who these Killzone 3 buyers were who were waiting for that feature, but that's another story...)
Captain Tuttle
Member
XxSlasherMcGirkxX
Member
I bet they are only going to give you a email if you registered your system on one of their websites or something which I bet the majority of us did not, even if we qualify.
You guys realize Sony doesn't actually give a shit about you, right?
staticneuron
Member
I don't remember that advert either but......
Ordered on February 4, 2012
Looks like I am good and I will most likely end up spending whatever money they give me.... right back with them. lol.
Petrae
Member
But somebody needs to stand up for Sony in this moment of struggle!
Dr. Kitty Muffins
Member
I'm taking the $50 psn cardwhere do we fill out a form at?
Indeed.
Well they lied about that the vita is still doing fine and they're still focused on it. They're more focused on ps4.
Everything, probably,
maybe
You can still be focused on something while being more focused on something else. That being said, SCEA has no idea what the Vita is. Other branches actually actually know it exists.
booooo
I completely agree, but sony does a bad job at it, and want to make the Vita a 3rd party system.
Kai Dracon
Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
The Sony Entertainment Network account page keeps track of activated Playstation systems. They might track this by your activation date in their system, since you've got to create or log in with a PSN account to use the Vita.
PshycoNinja
Member
Do we have any idea on when Sony is sending out these vouchers? I would like to be able to get Freedom Wars.
As crazy as it is I just knew there would be some folks in here trying to defend Sony on this. And lo and behold.
Badlucktroll
Member
I bought one in feb. 2012, do i have to have my receipt to get this money?
http://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/141125sonycmptexhb.mp4
(among other dubious claims in this video)
anexanhume
Member
Why did I not think of this. Pretty easy choice.
eyeball_kid
Member
Par for the course with Deutsch LA. From what I've heard, when a client would come into the office, executives at Deutsch would hire temp workers to sit in cubicles to make it look like they had twice as many people working on the client account as there actually were.
Even if you ignore every other game and only look at this ad as it relates to MLB 12. They literally show this guy pause MLB 12, pick up his Vita and continue to play on his way to work. They don't mention that a) you need to buy the game twice or b) you can't actually pause mlb 12 and continue to play it on your vita; you can only transfer saves between baseball games
test_account
XP-39C²
Generally speaking since i've seen this being mentioned many times, i'm curious about what type of caring people are requesting, or what they find reasonable that should be done regarding caring in this case. I dont think anyone would argue against that the companies care about if the consumer is happy or unhappy with them. Afterall, companies exist soley because of their consumers (unless there is some goverment funding or something), so its clear that they care about their consumers in some way. So what type of level of caring beyond this are people thinking about?
Caring enough to not deceive their potential consumers? You know, accepting basic law?
test_account
XP-39C²
Sure, false advertising shouldnt happen of course, indeed. I was more generally speaking about the term. I've seen it being used several of times, also in situations where false advertising didnt happen. Doing false advertising will also lead to consumers being dissapointed, as we see in this case (otherwise the lawsuit wouldnt have happened).