Five Ways Sony Can Repay Customers For The PSN Outage/Data Breach (SNE)

When you screw up – I mean

screw up – what do you do? Do you whip out a simple “I'm sorry”? Or do you rush to the nearest jeweler, buy a large diamond and beg for forgiveness, Kobe Bryant-style? Whatever the case, if you were one of the

affected by the recent outage and data breach, then you know that it's not always easy to forgive and forget. Right now, Sony

is having a horrible year. One can only imagine how company officials must feel, knowing that they may never regain the trust of the affected parties. If Sony wants to survive this situation, it must not treat it as just another technical glitch. Consumers are furious, and for good reason. Frequent apologies and a hopeful “we're working hard to improve the service!” press release will not suffice. In order to persevere, Sony must go above and beyond our wildest expectations.

One of the cheapest ways Sony could repay consumers is by working with developers (both in-house and third-party) to offer additional betas and additional demos to PSN users. As cool as that may be, however, it's not quite enough. But if Sony gave away a ton of downloadable content (and allowed PSN users to choose whatever they wanted), something tells me they'd be willing to forget about this horrible ordeal.

Sony brags that PlayStation 3 “only does everything.” So why not launch a “We're Only Giving Away EVERYTHING” campaign and give away one free movie, one free rental, one free downloadable game, and one free DLC to every PSN user?

Sony's revenue might take a hit, but this would be a great way to produce

million sellers while simultaneously rewarding consumers for not selling their PS3s during the outage.

When PlayStation Network still worked, anyone with a PlayStation 3 could log in, download demos, stream videos, surf the web, and play games online, among other things. But to access PlayStation Plus, Sony's “premium” service, users were required to pay a monthly fee or drop $50 for the whole year. No more. Sony needs to remove the fee entirely and give every PSN user a one-year subscription to PlayStation Plus.

What's the best way to repay PSN's

of users? Give every one of them five free downloadable games of their choice. Then take this deal one step further and offer it to every person who buys a PlayStation 3 this summer. This wouldn't be a cheap solution for Sony. But it would create a tremendous amount of goodwill toward consumers and publishers alike (the latter because Sony would have to pay them a ton of money for this deal). It would also create a huge amount of positive buzz in the media, and entice new console buyers to head in Sony's direction.