You know, there’s something that I’ve never quite never understood about this industry. What makes the games industry think that they can control the used market the way they do when I don’t have to pay any extra fees for owning, say, a used couch that I found on craigslist? Nevertheless, Sony has come up with a new way to control the used game market and make used game sales less and less appealing.
The new method which Sony recently patented involves “tagging” games that are played on multiple systems. This is most likely achieved through an online system of some sort, but the details are a little fuzzy right now.
There are rumors going around that the new PlayStation (the PlayStation 4, if you will) will have the ability to control and block used sales. However, this has not yet been confirmed and Jack Tretton, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, has said that he would be against the idea. Still, it looks like we are getting closer and closer to a world where resale rights no longer exist. Let’s just hope that Sony doesn’t follow through on this. It would have to be quite a project to get past a President/CEO that is against it.
Source: Destructoid