Don't Worry, PS4 Will Play Used Games

Gamestop and legions of concerned gamers can breathe easy, for now. Despite widespread concern that the Playstation 4 would contain technology designed to block used games, Sony confirms that this isn’t the case.

Eurogamer’s Tom Bramwell caught up with Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida following last night’s announcement and had, from the transcript, a very weird interview. After some back and forth, Yoshida put the question to bed with this:

“So, used games can play on PS4. How is that?”

Another source confirmed. Sony did file a patent for used-games blocking technology, but apparently that had nothing to do with the Playstation 4. It’s not surprising – analyst opinion prior to the announcement was that any such measure would be economic suicide for a new console, instantly yielding ground to any platform with a friendlier setup.

It’s still possible that Microsoft’s next console could feature some version of used-games blocking, even if it seems unlikely at this point. Physical media is too important a part of the modern console landscape right now. When people buy a piece of physical media, they like to imagine that they own it.

Backwards compatibility is another chief concern for many gamers, but that’s going to be a stickier wicket. The PS4 will not provide native support to PS3 games, planning instead to stream old games over the cloud. But Sony wasn’t specific as to how extensive that library would be, or when it would be made available. I doubt we’ll ever see a situation where all old games work on the new system – more likely we’ll end up with something akin to Nintendo’s virtual console. Neither PSN downloads nor save games will transfer, either.


http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2013/02/21/dont-worry-ps4-will-play-used-games/