In the race to see who can commit corporate seppuku the fastest, Sony Entertainment has pulled ahead with a commanding lead. Filing patents for tech that blocks pre-owned games from being played on their consoles, Sony has surpised nobody.
Filing a patent doesn't mean that this is set in stone, it just means that Sony can sit on the technology, just in case. According to the patent, the company has patented a method of "tagging" games played on multiple systems, with the purpose of trying to control secondhand sales. Wow. Let us know how that works out for you. The full patent can be found over on NeoGAF, but the most aggravating bit is below:
"According to the present embodiment, realized is the electronic content processing system that reliably restricts the use of electronic content dealt in the second-hand markets," reads the patent. "As a result, the dealing of electronic content in the second-hand markets is suppressed, which in turn supports the redistribution of part of proceeds from sales of the electronic content to the developers."
Like we said, this way lies suicide. We don't think Sony would ever implement this, but it has been rumored that the PS4 wouldn't play pre-owned games. Expect the Internet to foam at the mouth over this one.
[via NeoGAF]
