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Sony's PS4 To Have Less Stringent DRM Than Microsoft's Xbox One
Tackhead writes "E3 is turning into Bizarro World this year. Sony has not only promised that the PS4 will support used games without an online connection, they trolled the Xbox folks hard with this Official PlayStation Used Game Instructional Video. Compounding the silliness, and hot on the heels of the political firestorm surrounding Donglegate, Microsoft went for rape jokes during their Xbox presentation."
Similarly, onyxruby writes "The Verge covers how Sony has crafted policies explicitly to make the PS4 consumer friendly to the public. They make the case that the PS4 will be superior in nearly every way [to the Xbox Next] by not requiring an Internet connection, not restricting used games, supporting indie developers and selling for $100 cheaper than the Xbox One." And if you're interested in the guts rather than the policies or the politics, Hot Hardware has a comparison of the internals of both of these new offerings.
You don't have to wait and see. Sony's presentation was largely a really brilliant piece of deception. Watch the Playstation 4 "lifestyle" video that Sony showed. They have people: downloading games from their phone, streaming games to start playing immediately and playing online co-op. No-where in their 'lifestyle' video do any of the gamers go to a store, buy a disc, put it in and play by themselves.
If you buy a digital game from Sony you already have less flexibility than the Xbox One's digital downloads. Sony is going to do everything in their power to push digital downloads, and for good reason, they're better. No scratched discs, no swapping a hardware dongle (inserting a disc) in order to play, you can get every game on day one without pre-order, you can play your entire library of games at work, or a friends house, or home etc. Digital downloads already make up a majority of PC game sales. They accomplished that feat in 2010. Consoles will get there in no-time. When was the last time you bought a PC game at a store? Exactly.
Though digital downloads accounted for most of the number of games sold from January to June, they accounted for just 43 percent of overall game revenue. But that difference stems mainly from the higher prices that retail stores charge over their online counterparts, says NPD.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10797_3-20016943-235.html
Also digital downloads are cheaper. No middleman, no distribution, no printing just straight download. Again, that was in 2010. By the end of 2014 everybody will be downloading on both consoles and while "theoretically" the PS4 will have used games and sharing--that's only for disc based games.
Similarly look at every single launch title that's being promoted, they're MMOs, they're quasi-mmos with drop-in PVP or co-op or they're multiplayer games like Modern Warfare (which kind of has a single player). So yeah you don't *need* an internet connection but it's like buying Team Fortress 2 and not having an internet connection, it's going to be a fraction of the designed game. Multiplayer is no longer an afterthought it's integral to most games. So sure on the PS4 you don't need an online check-in but it will be the shell of the game you purchased.