back in the days when i was into my games (way, way back when the mega drive and SNES were battling for global domination) i know thatoften the only way to be able to afford to buy the latest games was to trade in 3 or 4 old games that were just sitting around doing nothing - this resulted in more sales, not less, as people were more likely to buy new games as soon as they came out, rather than waiting for them to come down in price.
the only way i can see this working is if the games are stoopidly cheap - imagine having to pay £40-£50 for a game, then being stuck with it - instead of having 10-15 titles at home (a mix of new and 2nd-hand), people might just end up with 3 or 4 new games.
and what happens when you come to sell your system in favour of the next machine - will you have to chuck your expensive disks in the bin??
or will sony be giving out rebates for every game you hand in??
somehow, i think this is just going to put people off it - i can also see a lot of developers being turned off by this.

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by Chambler
This would put selling your second hand games on the same level as "piracy" and therefore illegal! What will they come up with next!

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Im sure I read this a while back.

They wont need to make it an offence, or police it, the system Sony are most likey to adopt is game registration. Sony will need to identify an individual copy of a game with an individual system/owner, or the 2nd hand trade will just move elsewhere from the highstreet.

Half Life 2 on the PC recently mandated that owners registered the game online, which rendered the game unable to be resold.

This is yet another step towards Sony heading for a big fall. I believe MS are every bit as much against the preowned market but they either saw the public relations nightmare it would cause them, or just wanted someone else to take the first step. It seems Sony gets to be the bad guy.

MS will probably never have to make this step as by the time we get to Xbox 3, we will probably have shifted largely to downloadable games, which are obviously not transferrable.

I totally agree with Wo. If Sony go ahead with this policy, in whatever implementation, it will create a backlash that will cut software sales significantly.

Microsoft is making a great move by letting Sony be the bad guy here. When games go downloadable, they'll cut out retailers to a large degree, eventually completely, and that will mean they'll take all the profits.

I love trading in games, it makes new ones cheap, but i want developers to get their profits, so i continue to get good games.

I guess this is supposed to be good news for games pubishers who lose potential sales by people buying mainly preorder games, but is it in reality?

Im thinking they are are only focusing on those people who buy preowned titles. Theve got nothing to lose here, and if they force a small percent of them to buy the same titles full price, its money in the bank.

But what about people who buy games full price NOW, knowing that if the game isnt quite the life changing experience they hoped, they can just cash it in? People will be much less likely to 'risk' a purchase.

There will be a greater divide between Tippple A titles and the rest, people who are prepared to pay full wack will only fork out for the titles they are confident they wont want to trade in.

How many developers are that confident their next title is THAT good? Past all the hype, most must know just how average their product is.

Just found this on digg - www.joystiq.com/2006/05/25/sony-denies-snafu-over-used-ps3-games/

Sony are claiming that there's no substance to this, not terribly suprising but thought it might be relevant .

I think that amounts to a skillful sidestep. As I said above, making it 'illegal' isnt an issue at all. All they have to do is make games registerable, and they didnt deny that did they??

What if you don't want to go online with your PS-3? Just as a parallel I don't have a modem in my games PC (I have a separate PC for games and one for the internet) it's interesting that folks are assuming that everyone will be willing to sign up to whatever online system that PS-3 is using!

Not that I'm bothered about half-life2 but how would I have been able to play that game seeing as my PC isn't online capable?

I might be wrong about this, but i think the gamebox just said 'connection required', so you would be out of luck.

It would indeed count out a fair few users, but software providers who take this step probably figure they are gaining far more in revenue than they are losing.

(Edited by Wobag 30/05/2006 18:43)