In an interview with Game Trailers’ Geoff Keighley, Sony CEO Jack Tretton shed more light on how used games will work on the PlayStation 4. It seems that, while the system’s first-party games will be free to trade in or share without restriction, third-party publishers can choose to behave otherwise.
Tretton’s remarks start at about 1:08:00 in this segment:
“If the consumer pays x amount of dollars for a game and they don’t have the flexibility to get some additional value out of it, it changes the way the perceive the value of the game and it takes dollars out of their pocket to buy a new game… We just want to give the consumer flexibility.”
Asked what Sony’s response would be if publishers wanted to restrict used games sales, Tretton replied:
“We create the platform. We’ve certainly stated with our first party games, we’re not going to be doing that. But we welcome publishers and their business models to our platforms. There’s going to be free-to-play; there’s going to be every potential business model on there and again that’s up to their relationship with the consumer and what they think is going to put them in the best stead. So we’re not going to dictate that. We’re going to give them a platform to publish on.”
On DRM:
“The DRM decision is going to have to be in the hands of the third parties. That’s not something that we’re going to dictate or mandate or control or implement.”
Tretton also said that a PlayStation Plus membership will be a mandatory purchase if you want to play multiplayer for PS4.
Comments
39 responses to “Third-Party Publishers WIll Have Final Say On Used Games For PS4”
Thats fine considering you should buy the ps4 for the exclusive sony published games anyways
So they are really doing what Microsoft is doing, and basically lied yesterday as they have just stated its up to publishers. Exactly what Microsoft said they would be doing. I knew they would be doing this, and found it funny how much everyone jumped on the Sony bandwagon over this. Not to mention them shafting every country outside of the US on price. $130+++ markups. Really Sony hasn’t won this E3. They have both produced pretty poorly.
Uhh, no, this is completely different from what Microsoft are doing. If I’m reading this correctly, it’s more or less the same as the current business model, and they won’t do anything to prevent asshole companies like EA doing their online pass practices. They haven’t announced ANY sort of DRM like that.
Absolutely no different from what goes on today.
Ummm no, Microsoft limits the people you can lend a game to down to only 1 person as well as having 24 hour check in DRM. How the hell is having more lenient policies than Microsoft lying? Don’t be stupid
That is the angle of this BS story but in reality it’s the same situation as with PS3 today essentially.
Again, not happy about the PS+ situation, I have it, but I can understand why people wouldn’t like it.
As for DRM… It’s the exact same situation that exists today.
i’m ok with the plus thing because i’ve seen the massive value of plus… its part of the reason i’m even considering a ps4
and yes i agree with you the DRM is just like today… if a publisher wants to put in an online pass they can… its still better than the xbone’s bullshit
Some companies have said that they wont be doing online passes any more. I wonder if they’ll rescind that decision.
The PS+ decision isn’t too surprising, it’s still far better value than Xbox Live Gold.
Please tell me how PS online gaming is as good as Xbox Live. I paid $39Aus for 15 months of xbox live. Not hard to shop around and find a good price. I have both a ps3 and xbox 360 and the online experience at xbox is something that concerns me about Sony.
Well actually, it’s not necessarily the gaming part, because at the moment you can play online for free on Playstation. So that’s already better than Xbox, and I play Xbox more, mainly because that’s where my friends are.
For VALUE, you get the same perks as Xbox live (demos and arcade games a week earlier – but who really cares), but Playstation also gives you a free game each month, and an online cloud storage so if your system is destroyed, the saves are backed up online and you can restore them on a new system.
Only yesterday, was Xbox finally trying to catch up to Sony for their online service. I admit it is smoother on Xbox, but for value, and I have no idea where you’re getting this $39 for 15 months from, Playstation is certainly better.
A free Vita game each month. Several free PS3 games. This month was Kingdoms of Amular, Ico HD, Shadow of the Colossus HD and Demon’s Souls.
Don’t forget it will also download and install system updates for you in the middle of the night if you ask it to, another bonus of PS+
Shouldn’t it do that anyway? I have to pay so I’m not annoyed by updates. I’m getting both consoles so doesn’t matter either way, but to tout that as a feature seems odd to me. Seems like gouging.
I’m just going off current extra’s that PS+ offer for the PS3 🙂 I would like to see that implemented in the new PlayStation as a standard. But who knows.
Ozgameshop.com for cheap everything game related, including live.
WTF? ive played both the ps3 and the 360 online, how the hell is online on 360 any better then ps3? its the game not the online its self
At luanch of the PS4 obvisously there won’t be any older PS4 games so I imagine the PSplus free games will be limited to small indie type games.
Personally as a non psplus subcriber I would gadly give up used games for free multuplayer as I don’t but or trade games.
One thing I can say without second guessing is that xbox live is better then play station network. Dont try to tell me im wrong because im not
I’m sure somebody is going to read this and say “That sounds an awful lot like what the XBone does…THEY LIED TO US!”
Well that’s simply not the case; the system will work exactly as it does now on PS3. This means that at best there’ll no form of DRM, at worst there’ll be an online pass enforced by the publisher of a game, not the console itself.
Thats exactly what I said. They clearly didn’t drop this news yesterday for a reason. They want people to see the conference, love it and then not see these little news drops. It may not be a lie but it is deception. If you haven’t read up lately, but this is what Xbone is saying they will be doing, leaving it up to publishers. Pretty sure either way Ubisoft and EA will probably be doing it on both consoles.
The difference is that it’s not baked into the console itself, meaning the only big companies like EA, Ubisoft and Activision would likely have the resources to implement it. With MS’s system, it’s available for anybody and everybody at the flip of a switch.
And what they said yesterday was that they wouldn’t be introducing new restrictions, it’d be the same is it is on PS3. And that’s basically what we’ve got – things like online passes are common, and even the occasional game that wouldn’t even let you play single player without connecting to PSN. Which I discovered to my disgust when I attempted to play Final Fight: Double Impact during the PSN outage. It’s not coincidence that I haven’t bought a single Capcom game since. Although the quality of their output in recent times hasn’t made it too difficult to stick to that principle 😛
That’s right. Publishers releasing games on the PS3 and 360 were completely able to lock down their games with DRM, just see stuff like EAs ‘online-pass’ and consider if they did it for single player too. PS4 is still better in this instance because the device itself nor PSN can enforce this DRM.
Basically PS4 DRM is opt-in (if you dare) and Xbone is opt-out (if you don’t want your game on it at all.)
*edit*
Just wanted to say – all of these issues with used games, internet going down, bringing it to a friends place etc. can be solved with one thing:
DISC CHECK
I mean how do you know a game is legit when there’s no Internet? DISC CHECK
How do you know that a friends console is allowed to play it? DISC CHECK
These companies are idiots.
Actually thats not the case at all – it’s still opt-in.
If you just release a game on the XBone, no DRM. if you leverage their platform to include DRM… then you have DRM. that’s still opt-in, and is up to the publisher. They included the *ability* for the console to manage it, not the requirement.
So if a company doesn’t Opt in I will be able to play their Xbone game anytime I want without having to connect to the internet every 24 hours?
It’s got Windows on it (partially). Someone will make an offline hack for it 😛
Yep I was gonna say that. If publishers were to use this kind of DRM on PS4 then they might piss off some gamers and push them to the other completely DRMless games available; of which they can play endlessly with no Internet.
Xbox on the other hand: it won’t matter whether the publisher cares about DRM the Xbox will still deactivate games after 24 hours of no Internet, and will still make calls to check your installs are legit.
Didnt MS say that games developed by Microsoft Studios will have no DRM also? and its up to the developers? cant imagine developer making a pass for xbone and not ps4??
Publishers can simply opt for DRM on PS4, but in reality they can only go so far as some kind of pass due to the PS4 not needing to be online at all times.
This is opposed by the XBone that handles the DRM for all parties due to daily requirement for an Internet connection (or your games cease to function) and the fact that it locks out second hand or borrowed games. So of course they’re going to say that Microsoft Studios’ games will have no DRM, they don’t need to implement it because it’s already there.
The Xbox One doesn’t lock out second hand games, you can still trade them in.
It does lock out borrowing at the moment, although MS said on their website that they’re still working out how loaning and renting games will work.
Publishers get to decide if they’ll let you trade in games, and whether you can give them to a friend or not. This is the same for both platforms it would seem. The only difference is that the Xbox has the mandatory 24 hour checks whereas the PS4 doesn’t, and the game giving and second hand options (when supported) are less restrictive on the PS4.
As much as i would want to agree with your first statement regarding the online passes – lets be real. EA announced about 2-3 months ago that it was doing away with online passes. That says to me – ok they got what they wanted with the Xbox One but since the majority of their games are muli-platform they most likely got what they wanted out of Sony as well, which is most likely the restrictions on used games and for all we know may include online checks similar to the xbox if the 3rd party wishes to implement it.
As lambo has said as well – There is not much difference between the Xbox One and the PS4 used game policy at this point in time except Sony seems to be announcing it better on the big stages with really “half-truths” or the truth being hidden away on the last bullet-point re “PS + for multiplayer”. What Sony did say in their used Video game video at their press conference was the truth, THEY as a publisher will not be restricting used game sales but it was a half truth because they didn’t state that any or all third-party games can set their own DRM restrictions.
IMO it was a little sneaky of them to neglect to mention it on stage.
EA are going to be the only publisher that will enforce it on the PS4. Which would not surprise me at all.
they Ditched online pass who is to say they will, maybe they will try and make a better name for them selves
EA: nuff said
so…..its exactly like Xbox one then.. since theirs is completely up to the publisher aswell…
Completely the same, except for the single activation and mandatory install policy, the 10 family member activation, the whole once only sharing policy, the 24-hour check-in mandate and all the other guff that Microsoft surrounds the games with.
As long as used games and “ownership” work the way they do now I’m happy. If EA want to come up with some brilliant way to piss off their own customers, I say let them.
It is worth noting that with the PS+ requirement for online, Sony are also telling publishers they are not allowed to do online passes. It all comes under the one payment for PS+.
I foresee a future where Third Party Publishers issue games exclusive to Xbox so they can easily restrict the access of used games.
I’m so confused by all this that I think for me it is best to wait and see what actually comes to fruition once the consoles launch and what happens in reality kicks in.
Totally agree. I’m not entirely certain what it’s going to be like to use either console at this stage. The only thing I can see is that both of them seem much more inconvenient to use than any of my older consoles.
This is all very entertaining to read but in reality think about… who has 10 family members that will be playing your XBone? Hell most of the people that I interact with in Videogames are all on their own systems. This whole back and forth is hilarious. As for the always on internet for XBone… doesn’t your PC have an always on connection? Sure it’s a bit silly for the mandatory 24 hour checks but to me it seems like they are trying to avoind the “hacks” and “mods” that so many people have done.
EIther way I am on board for both systems. Have them both preordered as of today. Don’t like one? Get both hahaha. I like the ideas behind both systems… just like I have both systems of the current gen.
I think “family members” was just an example. I took it to mean it could be used for family, friends, or just guest who come over, but I see your point. And I agree with you on the 24-hour check in. My PC and 360 are already connected to the internet all the time. A daily check in isn’t that a big deal to me. The only times my internet fails are power outages or Time Warner Cable being a pain. And in those cases, I have bigger issues to worry about than playing Peggle.