I commented on this before, but it seems someone has dredged it up and made it a front page news item again.
Sony could potentially prevent sales of used games (Link Dead) which in turn would prevent usage of the games on more than one console in the house, and potentially prevent you from taking your game to a friends house to play with them.
They’ve had the patent on this… Since 2000. The story was widely distributed over a year ago. Why is someone FUDing this now? I wonder if MS has their mits in the media and is prompting them to do this in the months leading up to the PS3 launch.
OTOH, If sony does implement this, they’ve found a sure-fire way of making me NOT buy their console.
A better way would be to talk to the games distributors and shops and work with them on incentives with preowned games. Give them discounts off the wholesale price of new games if they either don’t carry preorders of games they still sell new, or if they pay a small relicensing fee for preowned games. If they DRM this technologically though, it’ll probably blow up in their face. Imagine games like Disgaea, Wild Arms Alter Code F, Breath of Fire 3 and 4… Games that sold out quickly and were never reissued. They would be lost forever to those who weren’t in the front of the line to buy them. Along with the fact that I have 3 PS2’s and will likely have at least 2 PS3’s before the cycle is done. If I can’t take my game from the computer center to the living room, I probably won’t even bother.