Sony’s Stance on Used PS3 Games
Well I for one am breathing a huge sigh of relief for the temporary reprieve granted to my sanity by the announcement that despite some rather nasty rumours, Sony has no officially announced plans on making the sale of used PS3 games illegal. That’s not to say that it won’t ever happen, but the general confusion and befuddlement in the industry does lead me to think that if it is, in fact, Sony’s plan, they haven’t finalized it, or informed people of its existence.
Unconfirmed rumours flew around last week courtesy of Games Radar UK, and “retail sources”, who claimed that plans to
adopt a licensing system that will mean gamers won’t own the PS3 titles that they’ve paid money for. Instead, they will only be purchasing the licence to play the game and that the software itself will still be Sony property - meaning that the disc won’t be the customer’s to sell.
This was, supposedly, to clamp down on the lucrative third party market in second hand games and keep all the cash flowing into Sony coffers.
However this little bit of nastiness has been totally unconfirmable, even by Games Radar’s US site. While Sony has remained mostly mum, spitting out nonsense about their November launch line-up and everything not related to used games, the UK PR manager at SCEE did say that single-machine copy protection, as rumoured back in the day, was completely baseless. She did not, and this is what people seemed to have been missing at the time, proclaim the used game rumour false, say anything about licensing or the sale of pre-owned games, meaning that it very well could be on the table at HQ somewhere.
Now, forced to address the same issue tinged with a different spin, the UK rep had the following to say:
We have definitely not been communicating that. It’s false speculation. We don’t have any further knowledge about this topic - either officially or unofficially, to be frank.
Again, no knowledge about it right now, and Sony certainly hasn’t been discussing it with retailers, but no outright denial that such a thing is being considered. It’s like the wad of gum that Sony just can’t seem to shake, but that they’re not doing much to try and pry off either. They’re doing a nice little dance by denying very specific parts of the rumours without addressing the main, major topic: what is Sony’s stance on used PS3 games?
Still, I have to believe, in my little PS2 cuddling heart, that Sony could not possibly be so short-sighted as to pull something like this. I buy a lot of my games second hand, simply because I can’t afford to pick up the hot new titles at full price. I would if I could, that’s the honest truth, but I can’t. Truth be told I’m about 5 years behind on my “games to get” list due to a decreased gaming budget (damn adult responsibilities!!) and less time to button mash. Restricting used games, for me, would ensure that I would be looking elsewhere for my entertainment, perhaps, dare I say it, to the Xbox 360 whose price should be slowly lowering by the time I’m ready to buy. Gamers won’t be the only pissy ones mind you. I’m sure retailers like EB Games would be less than receptive to anything resembling this sort of plan.
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POSTED IN: Musings, News, PS3, Rumors, Things That Suck
1 opinion for Sony’s Stance on Used PS3 Games
Mattias
May 29, 2006 at 10:31 am
“Sony has no officially announced plans on making the sale of used PS3 games illegal.”
Since when does Sony legislate? Last time I checked it was the governments :-) Sony may wish that selling used games and movies were illegal, but if for example the Swedish, where I live, government have stated that it’s legal, there’s not much Sony can do really. ;-)
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