1. Publisher Support And A Sony Flip Flop
In today's market, the publishers are king. Especially over the last generation, companies like Activision and EA have arguably become bigger entities than Microsoft and Sony, in terms of their gaming divisions anyways. The industry is ruled by what sells most and consoles would be insane, in a business sense, to let Call of Duty, FIFA or Grand Theft Auto become exclusives to a direct competitor. (Note that I said in a business sense. It would be great for the medium to see a massive console try and come up with a whole new slate of properties) It is no secret that publishers have been trying to get rid of the used game market for a while as they don't see any of the returns on the games. These publishers like to control their games and they will be able to start siding with consoles if one does not play along with them. Can you imagine if Activision pulled Call of Duty off of the Playstation? That would be massive. Interestingly, the other day Geoff Keighley told
GameTrailers:
The one thing that is amazing to me is that right now were not hearing a lot from the game publishers about what their view is on this. The console companies are becoming the bad guys. And, you know, Microsoft is getting beaten up a lot on it. Sony, I think, has been seen as this kind of white knight so far thats not going to restrict used games. Based on some of the things Im hearing, I dont think thats entirely true, because I cant see publishers allowing one system to do one thing and one do another.
Scarily, he might be right. I don't think the silence that Sony has maintained on the subject is going to help them, be it that they are implementing something similar or not. Sony are undoubtedly in a rather tight corner at the moment and it is going to be very interesting to see what they have to say once they finally emerge from their cubby hole. Remember, the only real difference between what Microsoft and Sony have said is that Sony have just said less. It is going to be incredibly interesting either way and one thing is sure, publishers are going to have a huge say in how this all turns out. Maybe even more so than the consumers. Which I do think that is sad.