PS3 2nd Hand and Rentals Friendly

November 14, 2005 - 9:00pm

Sony has reacted to recent rumors that claimed that Playstation 3 games would only be playable on the console they were first used on. The Japanese consumer electronics giant claims that this is not the case and that PS3 titles will be playable on any PS3 console.

The stories, which begun surfacing a week ago, suggested that a new technology would be introduced by Sony that would include an authentication code carried by each game. Once that code had been read by one PS3 machine it would be unreadable by others. This technology would mean the end of the second hand games market as well as the end of rentals. It was immediately suggested that the recent rants by Epic's Mark Rein regarding the evils of rentals and second-hand sales was a sign that developers were on-board.

Sony has now gone on record regarding these stories to the Guardian in the U.K. and Jennie Kong, UK PR Manager at SCEE said: I would like to clarify that this is false speculation and that PlayStation 3 software will not be copy protected to a single machine but will be playable on any PlayStation 3 console.

This pretty much puts an end to the rumors, although the detailed accounts of how the authentication system will work suggest that Sony had, at some point, considered such a route. It is still not clear if the authentication technology will be used with Blu-ray at all or if it was simply a research project that will not be utilized in the market place.

Comments

PS3 2nd Hand and Rentals Friendly

Isn't there an authentication tech that they are using with Blu-ray though? Similar to those DivX machines that required you to be hooked up to a phone line at all times? Yeah its another rumor, but isn't it supposed to break your PS3 if it identifies a Blu-Ray as not authentic? Just kinda bugs me if dust gets on the disk or something and misreads some disks...

PS3 2nd Hand and Rentals Friendly

I hope sony goes down big time, and ms too. They are starting to go too far in order to try to fight piracy. I dont like having limits imposed to me because other people copy and use their stuff for free. CD-keys were enough, whoever owns a pirated game that requires a legit cd-key for online play wouldnt have bought the game anyways.

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