The Federal Trade Commission has ordered Sony to compensate early PS Vita adopters with either $25 in cash, or $50 in PSN credit.
The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has found software and hardware giant Sony guilty of “deceptive marketing” in the early stages of its PS Vita campaign, and has ordered the Japanese company to compensate early adopters of the system. Anyone who purchased a PS Vita in the US on or before June 1, 2012 should be getting an email from Sony soon, with details on how to claim said compensation – either $25 cash, or $50 in PSN credit.
So what was this “deceptive marketing” that Sony was guilty of, exactly? According to the FTC report, early Vita advertisements suggested that the handheld device would support Remote Play with any PS3 game, so you could play it on the go. One ad in particular showed the Vita being used to play Killzone 3.
In reality, the Remote Play feature only works on a select number of PS3 titles, and Killzone 3 is not one of them. “Very few, if any, other PS3 games of similar size and complexity are remote play compatible,” the ruling noted.
Next up, Cross-Saving between PS3 and Vita was an advertised feature that was suggested to be available to all titles. Ads made it look like you could stop a PS3 game at any time then resume it on Vita. Again, lots of games either didn’t offer these options at all or only offered them in a limited capacity.
Lastly, a lot of these early Vita ads really pushed the 3G model with a subscription to AT&T’s Mobile Broadband Network, strongly suggesting that you’d be able to play live multiplayer matches if you got this package. As it turned out, the feature was limited to asynchronous or turn-based gaming.
So there you go. If you were an early Vita adopter, you’ll soon find yourself $25-$50 richer.
