Sony registers patent against used games
Let me start this by saying that this is just a patent, patents are registered and never used by companies all the time. They are registered in case the company wishes to use them to and to stop other companies from using the exact same ideas or technologies. Now thats out of the way lets have a look at what Sony have actually registered. Today they have been granted a patent that allows a playstation disc to be "bonded" with a users log in deatails. This effectively means that once you heave bought a game and played it on your console with your log in details the resale value of your game is basically zero as another user would not be able to play it on their console.
The debate about whether the used gaeme market is fair goes on between the developers and the consumers every day. The argument of course is that when a used game is sold the developer and publisher does not get any of the money and while this market contuinues to grow the money available to make new games is dwideling. people simply wait a few months and buy the game for half the money. On the other side of things is that when you buy a product as a cosumer that item is yours, and its your right to sell it on of you wish. With any other product if you wish to sell it when youve finished with it then that is perfectly acceptable. Why should games be any different. And I'm not a lawyer so I would not even try and suggest if its even legal to stop a sale of something that you own.
It is expected of course that the Playstation 4 and the XBOX 720 will be the last of the console generations that will be able to play games from a disc as the digital downloading of games becomes more popular and eventualy the only option. When this happens the sharing of discs or second hand game sales won't be an issue as digital copies can be easilly locked to a specific console and with game updates happening all the time, even pirate copies will have to be cracked over and over again in order to play. This is good news for the gaming industry of which I am a fan, and while I dont mind this move at all I'm not sure the whole consumer market will agree. For instance what if Sony used this patent and prevented used games from being sold for its consoles but Microsoft elected not to do the same, this would put Sony at a massive disadvantage, I cant see this happening it will be all or nothing with the console manufacturers.
What do you think of the used game market? where do you stand on the conflict between your rights as a consumer and the rights of the games developers to get paid for their work.
One thing I will say is that personally I dont think this will come about, I think they will wait until consoles only accept digital copies of games and then the used game market will already be dead.
