Used Game Blocker Patented by Sony

<p>At first glance&comma; this looks like a new&comma; albeit slightly unwanted&comma; feature of Sony&&num;8217&semi;s next-gen console&period; Or&comma; it could just be Sony patenting their ideas and hardware so that other people can&&num;8217&semi;t use it without their knowing&period; Which is worse&quest; At any rate&comma; it seems like <a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;freepatentsonline&period;com&sol;y2013&sol;0007892&period;html">Sony filed this patent<&sol;a> back in Sept of last year&comma; but was only recently published for the world to see&period; <a href&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;www&period;neogaf&period;com&sol;forum&sol;showthread&period;php&quest;t&equals;506560">NeoGAF<&sol;a> caught this one&comma; because those guys never seem to miss anything when it counts&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The patent details a process in which individual games are tagged with information regarding whether or not they&&num;8217&semi;ve been bought and played before&period; The game system itself would be able to check these tags and&comma; should things not add-up properly &lpar;different user ID w&sol; a used game that&&num;8217&semi;s been tagged&rpar;&comma; the game could be blocked&period; Potentially causing frustration&comma; heartache and the sale of more &&num;8216&semi;new&&num;8217&semi; games&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>From the patent&&num;8217&semi;s abstract&colon; <em>&&num;8220&semi;The disk drive reads out a disk ID from the game disk&period; When the game is to be played&comma; the reproduction device conveys the disk ID and a player ID to the use permission tag&period; The use permission tag stores the terms of use of the game and determines whether a combination of the disk ID and the player ID conveyed from the reproduction device fulfills the terms of use or not&period;&&num;8221&semi;<&sol;em><&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Again&comma; this isn&&num;8217&semi;t a full on confirmation that Sony&&num;8217&semi;s next PlayStation console will be able to block used games&comma; but it sure does seem to be foretelling what could be in store for consumers&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;