A potential PS3 bombshell about " Used " games.

[Anaki]

Re: A potential PS3 bombshell about " Used " games.

wouldn't this mean if ur ps3 breaks your screwed then o.O? it broke now all my games dont work no more

[kuu]

Re: A potential PS3 bombshell about " Used " games.

It's from the inquirer. You can't take anything in there seriously. This also would not hinder piracy at all. Piracy isn't taking a legal game from one house to another, its mass producing a single copy. In this case it claims to be removing the authenification code from the game dvd after it is read in (as if Sony would spend extra on a DVD writer feature). Easy solution, make copies before you try to load the game on a console. Also, what happens if you had a hard drive crash (or whatever permanent storage is being used with the ps3). Now you have a bunch of games you can't play and a broken ps3. This would kill the legal game rental industry which Sony wouldn't want to do either. It's fake and not going to happen.

No it's doable...and not doable.

Yes it's possible to do what described, and not that much hardware cost.

No it's imposible on the bluy-ray, and they're not about to be changed at this stage of the game.

So 98% the rumor is bogus for PS3 at least. This isn't something you can do on the next gen DVD media specs, not to mention that it's unfeasiable to tool for currently.

Arc the lad: The end of Darkness aka the no one playing arc the lad online(development title).

[Gyotsha]

Re: A potential PS3 bombshell about " Used " games.

Here's another article on it, and they say it's only a rumour http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000420067137/

[Aeni]

Re: A potential PS3 bombshell about " Used " games.

RUMOR ALERT!! RUMOR ALERT!! <call> Stop jumping the gun!!

First off notice at the top under the header "That's the speculation" and near the end "While the PS3 hasn't been expressly mentioned in the patent in English or Japanese...! Speculation people is NOT fact! And actually this makes absolutely no sense at all. They would be shooting themselves in the foot and they know that. Think about this, most people are tech savvy that buy their products. Would a tech savvy person go for this bs?? NO! So the loss in revenue would be DRAMATIC! The chances of this being implemented on the PS3 is a snowballs chance in hell!

No less than Ken Kataguri himself is listed among the inventors, which makes it look like this is a move that came from very high up. It has already been pointed out that many Playstation users have had to replace their console, surely this would leave us high and dry in that event.

I didn't make that up. It's in the article and there's a link to the filed patent. Read it and weep.

I hate to burst everyone's bubble here, but Balfree is correct. We pushed the video gaming industry to this point. The game publishing companies have problems with piracy and shrinkage (A retail term used to describe loss of goods through theft, damage and other miscellaneous reasons) These issues are not easily combatted unless every country are on the same page with regards to law, crime and prosecution. We know that in the current state of the world, this is unlikely to happen any time soon.

How are these companies then reducing their overhead so that they are actually turning a meaningful profit margin in order to stay in business? They are passing these costs to the developers in the form of increased publishing costs and tighter deadlines with little to no flexibility for developers to be able to maneuver their release dates.

Once these costs increase for game developers, it then follows that their development budget balloons. In order to develop a title that took them a unit of resources to develop previously, it now takes them 20-40% more in resources. If sales were not a smashing success on the prior title or development project, then there's little opportunities for the developers to seek investment and funding for new projects.

With that said, it usually follows that by lowering their costs and overhead, the developers might be able to get their project approved by whatever authority controls the process. Lowering costs usually means:

(a) Getting rid of long-term employees because they almost always cost the most amount of money and unless their talent exceeds the expectations of their managers, they most likely will be replaced with the "next best thing."

(b) Reducing employee benefits and perks.

(c) Removing smaller specialized teams and replacing them with larger, jack-of-all-trade and inexpensive groups of people (Temporary workers come to mind)

(d) Tighten development schedules and force employees to forfeit their vacation benefits and stipend them with a false "lucrative" salary in exchange for unhealthy work hours (Read the many articles on the problems at EA and other development houses)

(e) Rehash previously used components in an endless chain of sequels to further reduce costs (This is called churning, but I'd like to call it "stale bread")

(f) Many more and sometimes shady labor related methods employed to reduce costs.

The ballooning costs can be easily absorbed by larger development houses as they can shuffle development teams around (The best of the best on the company's "A" projects while the bottom dregs work on the el-cheapo titles) The larger companies can also get away with many of the above and are mostly immune to employee disatisfaction ("We can replace you f00!")

Smaller and middle tiered companies are not so fortunate. Usually smaller companies get absorbed into larger companies in an effort to survive and those that can't do this go out of business or bankrupt. Same with companies that have a large group of developers but not financially stable enough to weather the storms.

I won't even get into the Artist Union (Yes, there's a union just for artists of all mediums ) and their arbitration no doubt further increases costs for a lot of companies.

Unless measures are put in place where both the consumers and the publishers/developers of games are protected, I don't think there's really any choice for any of the related companies out there. It's only a matter of time before more draconian measures are put into place to satisfy the issue at large.

Unless of course we go into WWIII and nuke the world to oblivion and then maybe we won't have issues like this.

[Karinya]

Re: A potential PS3 bombshell about &quot; Used &quot; games.

Bottom line is if they put this in the PS3, the PS3 will bomb. Who wants to buy hardware with that kind of crippling limitation? Who will even want to develop for a system with that kind of albatross around its neck? These days even Nintendo can't carry a system on first party games alone.

And if we know this, Sony knows it too. They've been enormously successful by giving consumers and developers what they wanted, not trying to push their own agenda like Nintendo and Microsoft. To reverse this policy now wouldn't be just shooting themselves in the foot, but rather, blowing their own heads off.

[Macht]

Re: A potential PS3 bombshell about &quot; Used &quot; games.

Well if the story is true then the only huge worry I have is the stability of the system. If they do implement it to PS3 (personally kind of find it hard to believe so, but never know) then the PS3 very damn well last an electronic devices usually device life expectency of like 14 years at least. Given their credit with the PS2 that kind of gives more to worry about it, mostly in part that the PS2s had a bad stability issue at start that was primarily a result of its production.

If they've improved their production lines so that the issues the PS2 had don't occur and if the system does last the electronic devices usual 14 years at least, then I probably could care less about such a decision given that I've never purchased "used" games before. My games are 100% new when I purchase them.

[Caspian]

Re: A potential PS3 bombshell about &quot; Used &quot; games.

Well, as for the interview, it could be:
A) Made up. "What? People lie??? How could this be?"
B) Misinterpreted. Could be just wishing something like that existed, but the cure is far worse than the disease sort of thing.
C) Entirely true and soon to be implemented.
I dont know which it is. Due to the reputation of the site posting, I find A to be the most likely, but who knows. I do know that if Sony does this, then they can pretty well kiss my ass and kiss my ~500 bucks (plus software prices) goodbye. I find it hard to believe that its cheaper to implement this whole thing, lose potential customers and retail outlets (i.e. ebgames, gamespot, blockbuster, etc.), and fan support, than the money they lose on piracy. I know the numbers are huge on piracy, but you'd have to be expecting that everyone who buys a pirated game or used game would be willing to shell out 50 bucks for the new version if the others are unavailable (and we all know thats not true). If its a lie, then its a lie, no biggie. If its true? Then its likely to be a horrific marketing and all around business decision.

[hamiko]

Re: A potential PS3 bombshell about &quot; Used &quot; games.

This has to be a fake.

[DakAttack]

Re: A potential PS3 bombshell about &quot; Used &quot; games.

Bind on Equip sucked in WoW, and it's going to suck in real life.

[Caspian]

Re: A potential PS3 bombshell about &quot; Used &quot; games.

Bind on Equip sucked in WoW, and it's going to suck in real life.

LMAO!

[TheGrandMom]

Re: A potential PS3 bombshell about &quot; Used &quot; games.

I didn't make that up. It's in the article and there's a link to the filed patent. Read it and weep.

ROFL!! And just because he was in on the invention means that the PS3 is going to have it? Isn't that a bit of a stretch? Sony is involved in more technology than just game systems. LOL

So some yokkle sees a patent for this and immediately spins it so that its going to be used with the PS3. Then gullible fools he talks about it to on the internet spread the rumor. Then people are going "OMGODZORZ THEY SUX!!"

Bottom line is if they put this in the PS3, the PS3 will bomb. Who wants to buy hardware with that kind of crippling limitation? Who will even want to develop for a system with that kind of albatross around its neck? These days even Nintendo can't carry a system on first party games alone.

And if we know this, Sony knows it too. They've been enormously successful by giving consumers and developers what they wanted, not trying to push their own agenda like Nintendo and Microsoft. To reverse this policy now wouldn't be just shooting themselves in the foot, but rather, blowing their own heads off.

Thank you for a sane post. Your right, doing this with the PS3 would screw them ROYALLY! I highly doubt they want to release a system that they spent so much on to produce and will lose money on with each sale just to shoot themselves by implementing this.

Could it be implemented in other media devices or possibly in the PS4? Yes, I think you could see this happen. They are always looking for new ways to stop piracy. Will it last and be the cure all they have been looking for? Only time will tell.

[Balfree]

Re: A potential PS3 bombshell about &quot; Used &quot; games.

what about ceasing the use of discs? they should work on some new ideas imo

[Karinya]

Re: A potential PS3 bombshell about &quot; Used &quot; games.

Any future system that implements this will run into the same problem. It's the ultimate in non-portability: you can't even port your game to another copy of the exact same system! The first system to introduce this will face a huge backlash. If you suppose some kind of industry-wide cabal to put this kind of thing on *every* system, then that whole generation of systems would face slow sales (frankly, the difference in capabilities between successive systems is narrowing significantly - compare the huge jump between NES and SNES to the moderate difference between PS and PS2 to the tiny differences between PS2 and future systems. Ultimately this could kill the console market entirely as they're already threatened by advances in PCs and the much greater number of households that have them. It's a lot cheaper to get a PS2 than a PC - but not if you already have a PC. And one of the major advantages of consoles is you can bring your game to your friend's house and not spend half an hour installing it before you play it...)

Unless, of course, it's easy to mod the system to remove this "feature", in which case it won't have that much impact on the hardcore crowd (other than driving the few that aren't already modding into doing so).

Casual users will be frustrated and not understand why their games don't work. Stores will be swarmed with complaints from users and lose a major revenue stream that's keeping them afloat right now, I wouldn't be surprised to see them stick the hypothetical system with this in the back corner of the showroom so the competitors *with* used game markets get more sales (would *you* promote a system that's intentionally retailer-hostile?)

Do I sound like a raving prophet of doom yet? Probably this is all BS anyway, but if it isn't, it could be the worst thing to happen to console gaming in a long time.

[Balfree]

Re: A potential PS3 bombshell about &quot; Used &quot; games.

Jesus what if your ps3 falls off the shelf and smashes into pieces? you have to buy the console AND the games _all over again_, this hardly makes any sense, so it has to be some stupid rumor.

[kuu]

Re: A potential PS3 bombshell about &quot; Used &quot; games.

As unmentioned facts, I'll restate them.

1: It's a very old patient. One that isn't really even useful anymore. DRM via internet is much more efficient then this peice of crap idea.

2: Blue-ray, can't do as discribed on the patient.

3: This does not mean sony won't try to do DRM route, but as it stands, no you will have this.

If anything Sony is going to do something akin to iTunes which activates and deactivates. Heck sony's sued root kit is better then this patient, and that's "malware" as it is.

So rest your easy paranoia minds...at least for the time being. It's not really all that different, as I said, as Diablo2 with a cd key, since next gen game are heavy trying to leverge online.