Sony To Make It Illegal To Sell Used PS3 Games?

Mike Howes 25 May, 2006 at 1:36am ET Article published in Tech

Ever take old console games to a pawn shop or video store? Ever trade them in for cash to someone else? Looks like Sony will try to make that illegal to do with PlayStation 3 games.

Sony do own a patent that allows them to change owning the game into owning a license for the game, akin to owning a license for a copy of Windows.

Though legality comes into question about how far a company can go to prevent you from selling an old game, there is probably a lot they can do to prevent stores and 2nd-hand retailers from doing that. That could impact a lot the future success of the PS3 in the long run.

Source: TechSpot

Comments

25 May 2006 ~ 1:58am RWB Where's that comic of a Sony board meeting on how they can **** up the PS3 launch even more?
25 May 2006 ~ 2:33am Thrax Now I know what I'm going to rip on Sony for for Bitter Crumpet 3. GG.
25 May 2006 ~ 4:38am shwaip sigh. read the source for that news.

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3086&Itemid=2

Essentially: They are not going to do that.
25 May 2006 ~ 5:15am Winga

shwaip wrote:

sigh. read the source for that news.

http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3086&Itemid=2

Essentially: They are not going to do that.

Yes I included a link to the source article in my newsline as I came to the same conclusion. However all the things Sony have done lately, just begs for this article to be thrown in, just to stir the pot a bit.

The article interestingly notes that Sony refused to comment on the story.
As the analyst says in conclusion of the article "These stories crop up from time to time, and I'm not convinced this is on the mark."

I suppose time will tell.
25 May 2006 ~ 8:09am CyrixInstead Well from the article they reckon it's all pie in the sky. However I was quite alarmed at seeing the truncated version of the thread title on the homepage, as the title is a question rather than a statement.

One massive factor in this never happening is the concept of making a game playable only on one console. The whole point of a games console is to be able to take your game round to a mates house and play it with them if you want to.

It would never work and Sony would be absolutely crazy to even think of making it happen. It's just idle gossip, and if anything an attempt to hit Sony while they're down so to speak, seeing as they had such a poor showing at E3 this year.

~Cyrix
25 May 2006 ~ 1:07pm shwaip "Looks like Sony will try to make that illegal to do with PlayStation 3 games."

From your newspost...The original article takes the complete opposite opinion. Any reason why yours changed?
25 May 2006 ~ 5:19pm Winga My views never changed at all
The source of my information actually came from TechSpot. Their article was already biased towards suggesting that Sony may do something crazy enough to change their license agreement. I was merely linking to their take on the matter.
On reading TechSpot's source, namely Next Generation it became very clear to me that it was probably just pie in the sky. For that reason I linked their page to my news post as well, so any reasoning person could draw his/her own conclusions.

My intention was not to mislead.