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New Sony Patent Blocks Second-hand Games
silentbrad writes in with a story about a Sony patent that would block the playing of second-hand games. "... the patent application was filed on 9 December 2012 by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan, and will work by linking individual game discs to a user's account without requiring a network connection meaning any future attempt to use this disc on another user's console won't work. The patent explains that games will come with contactless tags that will be read by your console in much the same way as modern bank cards. When a disc is first used, the disc ID and player ID will be stored on the tag. Every time the disc is used in future, the tag will check if the two ID's match up and, if not, then the disc won't work. The document goes on to explain that such a device is part of Sony's ongoing efforts to deter second-hand games sales, and is a far simpler solution than always-on DRM or passwords. It's worth noting that Sony has not confirmed the existence of the device, and the patent doesn't state what machine it will be used in, with later paragraphs also mentioning accessories and peripherals. ... There's also the issue of what happens should your console break and need replacing, or if you have more than one console. Will the games be linked to your PSN account, meaning they can still be used, or the console, meaning an entire new library of titles would need to be purchased?"
...customers do not (want to) know it and continue buying from these assholes.
Well, have a very nice fuck you year Sony.
All these DRM schemes are future-failures. More specifically, at some point in the future, you will be denied the game you purchased because of the DRM. Get a new console? Now you have to (somehow) reset your card so you can run it on the new console. Want to take it to a friends house? Pack up your console! Company goes out of business, or stops supporting it because it's obsolete? Say goodbye. In the future, old games won't be worth more because of rarity. They'll be worth more if you still have some way to make them work after their DRM scheme fails. Of course, it will be cracked. Quickly. Which is a GOOD thing.
Just don't buy anything by Sony.
because then I just need to continue to avoid SONY and it won't affect me.
So basically Sony want to do pretty much what Steam already does on the PC and people are saying "it doesn't work". Well guess what. It *does* work and chances are you're already using a service where you simply cannot resell games. As for the rest of the arguments, I heard them before. In 2003, when Steam went online. The world, amazingly did not end.
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
So the competition will be less tempted to steal their IP, and I as well as surely many others can take their business to them!
Officially, screw you Sony. I will never, ever, over my dead body buy another product from you, or an affiliated company.
And to their patent lawyers, please, I beg you - Make the patent watertight.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
It's Sony. It's stupid. Why does anybody still buy their crap ? Why does anybody buy any sort of crap like this ?
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
There is a really simple solution to this. DO NOT BUY ANYTHING FROM SONY. Complain to magazines and web sites that review their stuff. If they ignore you then boycott that site / mag too. DONE. Don't bitch and whine about it. Don't wave your arms and scream it's unconstitutional while you stand in line to fork over $75.00 for the latest repackage of the same game you've already played 50 times. Just Freaking walk away! People really fail to grasp this. Don't bother to pirate their stuff. Sure this can be broken - but why? Treat them like they don't exist. Honest you WILL live without Sony. But Sony will NOT live without customers. Then if this actually matters to enough people Sony will become a responsible corporation and behave in polite society. If not then you will have taken the moral high ground anyway, and probably given your money to a responsible studio that doesn't treat its paying customers as mortal enemies. Had you rather be on the side of good - or play Killzone 15? Free choice. It cuts both ways.
Always behind on technology, but on the cutting edge of evil.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
you to buy Sony toys? No? then STFU AND STOP BUYING THEM.
This patent seems a bit pointless. The future lies in digital app stores.
The 2nd hand market exists because the price of games are too high.
Second hand markets will continue to exist, no matter what the price of the new product; so dropping the price of new games isn't going to solve that "problem". I do wonder what effect abolishing the second hand market would have on new games sales though - nievely you might say that new sales will increase because there is nolonger any competition, but that ignores the fact that the customer only has a finite amount of money. Lots of people fund their new purchases (in part) by selling stuff they no longer want, if they can't sell their old stuff they have less money to invest in new stuff. I'd certianly be less inclined to blow £50 on a game if I knew I could never sell it, and similarly less inclined to spend £hundreds on a console if I knew I could never buy any cheap games for it. (But then maybe I'm wrong - I'm not a gamer, I can think of far more fun things to do with my time and money than sit in a darkened room in front of a console for hours on end).
http://blog.nexusuk.org
A seller (store) is responsible that goods work for a reasonable time. Typically two years for electronic goods. A snag is that after six months, the buyer has to prove that the fault was present at time of purchase (within the first six months, the seller would have to prove that the fault was not present at the time of purchase).
I'd consider it a very clear fault if a game that I purchased doesn't work after I had to buy a replacement console for a broken one. And since the fault was intentionally built into the game, having to prove the fault was present is no problem. So stores in the UK and elsewhere in Europe will be very, very, very unhappy with this. I'd also consider it a serious fault if I can't sell a game because it doesn't work on the console of a prospective buyer.
So, I have seen the light and realize that Sony is a company that will do more harm to itself then good and therefore deserves to be losing the billions it does.
Sony's gaming division is the only thing Sony has left. They lost in the consumer electronics race for TV's, home audio, mobile audio, eBook readers. I mean the last 20 years of Sony's history has been about failure more then success. However I don't think Sony will create a decent product in the PS4 if this is the direction they are taking by creating consoles that will reject used games and require some kind of network registration to play a new game for the first time.
Sony should do one of two things, either sell off the hardware to Samsung, or sell off their entertainment divisions to Hollywood. By trying to be both a hardware manufacturer and content provider, Sony has always been at odds between trying to protect their content and creating innovative devices, they are failing to do both now.
Sony stopped trying to make the best products and instead are only succeeding in becoming the world's best asshole company, which is amazing given that Apple exists,
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Where have you been? C'mon... the walkman, trinitron ... minidisc!
Okay, sure minidisc wasn't popular in the US ... and they tried keeping CRTs around for too long due to trinitron ... but back in the 80s and 90s, Sony was way ahead in technology.
Even their laptops were considered years ahead in design 'til Apple put out the TiBook.
So, if you said 'behind on technology for the last 15 years', sure, I could agree ... but *always* behind? no. I mean, they had some of the most advanced rootkits for their time.
(in the bluray vs. hddvd wars, bluray wouldn't have won over HD-DVD if it hadn't taken payoffs to other companies and selling PS3s at a loss ... I refuse to change over to their crap format that just means that I'm forced to sit through 10 min of commercials every time I put in a disk)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
IANAL, but I wonder if such a patent, assuming valid, would be legal to use in the US and other jurisdicitons. There is a lot of case law describing consumer sales and what one is allowed to do with what one purchases, including resale of said goods. While Sony might have a legal patent, it might not be legal to impliment it.
As I said, IANAL, but maybe somebody who is could chime in.
I'm not sure that's right...where are you getting that from?
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
This would not only kill the 2nt hand market, it would kill the rental market. I think Sony will find less people will buy a PS4 (if this as implemented in it) since they can't sell old games, buy used games, or rent games. Sure, the Hardcore PS fans will still buy the PS4 and new games, but only they will.
Plus if Sony thinks they will go 4 years before they new machine is hacked to play backups, they are in for a rude awakening. My guess is Sony will have a huge target on their back this round.
And this attitude that Sony has towards it's customers helped me quit playing EQ2 after 6 years. There was NO way I was going to pay them any more money for anything.
Be seeing you...
There's a lot of Sony-hate swirling around the comments on this story. Believe me, I can understand that. This isn't exactly the most pro-consumer technology ever to have been patented (though as yet, Sony haven't said they intend to actually use the technology).
However, I actually see this as symtomatic of a wider problem for the video games industry; very few people are making money from it. Sony makes some pretty thumping losses these days; their gaming division is one of the better performing parts of the company, but it's still a long way from where it was in the last console generation. Nintendo's making some pretty big losses; it had to overturn a long-held hardware-at-a-profit business model to get any kind of installed base for the 3DS, has had to continue to sell at a loss on the Wii-U and faces an uncertain future of the Wii-U doesn't get traction. MS's situation isn't quite so bad, but its stock price has been flat for a decade and if it had the same currency issues that its Japanese competitors face, then its situation might be just as bad as theirs.
The situation's hardly any better in the land of games development. Big developers like EA struggle to turn a profit despite trying every trick they can think of (day-one DLC, online passes, season passes etc). Their few guaranteed cash-cows like the annualised sports series and modern military shooters are basically the only reason that the more interesting games they put out can continue to appear. Mid-sized shops like THQ which don't have those cash cows are in very unpleasant places indeed. A couple of companies like Zynga and Rovio manage to get-rich-quick on the basis of low-budget titles that strike it lucky with the zeitgeist, but they increasingly look like one-hit wonders. And for every indie studio that produces a hit, there are 99 that produce forgettable garbage before vanishing into obscurity. It's even worse over in Japan, where all but a few of their developers have given up on true global competition, focussing instead on the same domestic kids-and-otaku market that most anime is produced for. Some people are clutching at free-to-play/pay-to-win as a potential solution, but that bubble's already bursting.
And retail? Here in the UK, our biggest specialised retailer (Game) went into administration during 2012. Sure, it got rescued, but it doesn't seem to be doing particularly well since then either. Its most direct competitor (HMV) looks like it won't survive the next few months.
Make no mistake, stuff like this latest Sony patent isn't thought up by plutocrats sipping champagne as they lounge on top of a Scrooge McDuck style lake of gold. These are desperate moves to stay afloat in what's become, over the last 3 years or so, a very unfriendly industry.
People moan about the price of games, but these are, in real terms, substantially lower than they were a couple of decades ago, when development costs were a fraction of what they are today. What I'd actually welcome is a company which is prepared to say: "We won't do any of this evil stuff like anti-resale measures or day-one DLC - but for those games with high development costs, we will accordingly charge a higher price than you've gotten used to paying". The prices of Wii-U games are noticably higher than those for the older platforms - but unfortunately, most of them are very thin pickings compared to other games, or are already available on other platforms with a much lower price.
Isn't that just because so many people waited until the price dropped to buy it? The Wii was cheap enough to buy it near launch. Of course I'm not sure if hardware failure prompted more additional sales of PS3 than Wii.
It's like those movie trailers here in the U.S. that say "The #1 movie in America." Well of course, if you have a $200 million movie budget and $50 million marketing budget you're probably going to be #1 on opening weekend.
despite trying every trick they can think of (day-one DLC, online passes, season passes etc).
Well, I don't know about the rest of the world, but among those I know a lot of the so-call "tricks" you've mentioned are the REASON that we don't buy games these days, or at the very least not day-one releases at full price.
Maybe it's a surprise, but... people like to own stuff they pay for. Notice that the "so-called" American dream isn't to "rent a nice place", but to own one's house and property (this applies beyond USA of course, but is used as example).
Beyond that, the money-chasing behaviour actually drives away customers. Always-on DRM is a turn-off for many, many gamers. Even the less hardcore crowd are starting to get pissed off that the newest $70 of "sports game X" really doesn't offer much improvement, but their older copy has suddenly lost the ability to play online with buddies.
It used to be you could pull up a chair and play with a group of buddies on equal footing (mechanics wise). Now you're stuck with shared-servers full of potty-mouthed teams, having to play for hours to gain "experience" in order to even be competitive. Oh, but wait, you could get "big gun X" without having to play for a few days straight, all you have to do is... pay more money.
People are tired of it. Yes, some people will still buy the console, but overall this sort of shit, these "tricks" are what drive away customers. Game prices aren't really that different from the old days, however anyone who cared with an old console can still pop in an old Mario cart and play with a bunch of friends, or you can load up an old PC game so long it runs on whatever OS you're running.
How about if you bought a windows PC that was automatically cut off the internet after 3 years? What if you had to drive your car around a track for 30 hours in order to unlock the stereo (optionally available for $150 extra)?
Game makers will try everything, but actual innovation or listening to fans seems to be the *LAST* thing they try. That's why kickstarter campaigns are getting some fairly surprising capital, and even a graphically simple game like Minecraft is a sneak-hit.
Every day, grab one patent attorney and cut his or her fucking head off and post it on YouTube. Every day. Until their behavior improves.
Sony was already on my boycott list with Activision, Apple, and Walmart. But here is a list of their subsidiaries from wikipedia.
All this will do is hasten the return of PC gaming. Especially with the surprisingly good F2P out there. Look at World of Tanks, (and the beta World of Warplanes, lotta fun there), Then checkout Hawken and MechWarrior Online for a little giant robot battle action (ok not really robots).
Granted you can spend money on these games but you don't gain any real advantage (besides faster xp and credit accumulation).
Screw the Consoles and their ridiculous DRM.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.