Sony unveiled PlayStation Rewards on their PlayStation.Blog yesterday, a service that rewards users with various prizes for playing and buying Sony games, as well as being an active member in the Sony gaming community. The program launches today, and best of all, is free.
Currently in an invitation-only beta phase available to eligible PlayStation Plus and Gamer Advisory Panel members, PlayStation Rewards only focuses on the PlayStation 3 at the moment, but Sony is planning on adding the PSP to the program in the near future.
The program features three reward tiers, “Select,” “Pro” and “Legendary,” and all it takes for members to graduate tiers is what loyal fans do already:
And, the best part is that you don’t have to do anything different. Keep playing new games, buying content purchased from PlayStation Network in the PlayStation Store and PlayStation Home, download movies and TV shows, or just communicate with us by taking one of our surveys, for example, and you’ll now be recognized for it.
As members jump tiers, their rewards becomes better as well, though the program doesn’t currently offer anything eye-popping: Exclusive PSN avatars, exclusive dynamic XMB themes, PlayStation Home content, and chances to enter members-only sweepstakes. Though the rest of the rewards aren’t particularly amazing just yet, the first sweepstake is probably universally desirable: An all-expenses-paid trip to the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as PlayStation’s guest.
The announcement does promise that the rewards will become better as the program ages.
Even though the rewards are currently mediocre, I feel this program has the potential to be huge. Not only does it offer real-life, tangible rewards just for playing video games, but it turns gaming into meta-gaming: Progressing within video games lets you progress in real life.
Get ready, PlayStation fans, you’re about to start gaining real-life levels while gaining in-game ones.
(via PlayStation.Blog)
