EEDAR: PSN Welcome Back Scheme 'Successful'

A new capital research study has found that Sony's PlayStation Network Welcome Back program, launched last month after the PSN outage, was a great success, with more users purchasing digital games than before the outage. According to EEDAR's Retail Buyer Report [PDF], which sampled IGN users, 17 percent of PSN gamers downloaded a PlayStation Network digital title in June, compared to 13 percent in March. Factoring out the four titles available for free via the Welcome Back pack, there was still an increase of users taking advantage of the online store, with 15 percent downloading PSN games. During June the PlayStation 3 saw an overall rise in home console share among acquired titles for all formats, up from 40 percent in March to 44 percent in June. However, the report suggested that the launch of the Welcome Back scheme may have negatively affected PS3 retail sales in June. EEDAR believes that the Welcome Back package signals a new successful strategy for promoting video games, and suggests that publishers should explore the possibility of releasing older titles for free to support sequels and new releases. This suggestion comes as a result of the report finding that LittleBigPlanet and InFamous both helped to raise awareness of their respective sequels. The report also noted that the Welcome Back scheme helped to raise possible purchase intent of sequels where a sequel is actually non-existent -- for example, in the case of the Welcome Back giveaway title Dead Nation.