At first glance, this looks like a new, albeit slightly unwanted, feature of Sony’s next-gen console. Or, it could just be Sony patenting their ideas and hardware so that other people can’t use it without their knowing. Which is worse? At any rate, it seems like Sony filed this patent back in Sept of last year, but was only recently published for the world to see. NeoGAF caught this one, because those guys never seem to miss anything when it counts.
The patent details a process in which individual games are tagged with information regarding whether or not they’ve been bought and played before. The game system itself would be able to check these tags and, should things not add-up properly (different user ID w/ a used game that’s been tagged), the game could be blocked. Potentially causing frustration, heartache and the sale of more ‘new’ games.
From the patent’s abstract: “The disk drive reads out a disk ID from the game disk. When the game is to be played, the reproduction device conveys the disk ID and a player ID to the use permission tag. 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.”
Again, this isn’t a full on confirmation that Sony’s next PlayStation console will be able to block used games, but it sure does seem to be foretelling what could be in store for consumers.