Sony Bringing PSN Pass To All First-Party Games 271
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the do-not-want dept.
from the do-not-want dept.
New submitter zeroshade writes "Sony has confirmed that going forward, all first-party games will use the PSN Pass to force used game buyers to pay an extra $10 just for the right to play the multiplayer component of used games they buy for the PS3."
Go away customers! (Score:5, Insightful)
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You know, you are right. Every time I just about break down and buy a PS3 Sony goes and does something like this.
Drake's Fortune is still in line of pricing for other PS3 new releases so it isn't like they are making the game cheaper for those not using multi-player. Being first party they could just raise the price if they wanted more money. Basically this comes down to one of two things:
* Just as part of scheme to make money off of each resale. Again a war on used games.
* Sony wants to bring Airline s
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When you buy used, you are buying Game Stop's product, not Sony's. Sony needs money to run PSN, which they don't get unless you are the first party. The real complaint should be based on the price and quality of games that make it to retail.
That's a false premise, as the original owner is no longer using the part of PSN that applies to the game they sold.
Unless they're pirates and made a copy of the game first, that is.
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If that game is resold five times, they are now storing five peoples info, indefinitely, with the revenue of one.
My point still stands.
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I have, thank you. The PSN won't take my CC anymore and I'm in no mood to make another call to customer support to get it unlocked for the privilege of continued abuse.
Re:Go away customers! (Score:4, Insightful)
Second hand games may not bring any income to Sony but the person selling the game then using the money to buy a new game does bring in new money to the company, so I really cannot follow their thinking here.
I hate sony, there are other companies I dislike and would be reluctant to buy products from, but I hate sony. I do not buy anything that has the sony name on it, and this includes sonyericsson phones. I realize companies are in the business of making money, but most have realized that crapping on customers isn't the best way.
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Pay what you want - to open source programmers. (Score:2, Offtopic)
Humble Bundle is going again. http://www.humblebundle.com/ [humblebundle.com]. In fact, I'm going to do some more looking into open source gaming.
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I'm ok with it.
If I bought a game for $60 and expect to sell it to someone for $30, I anticipate a net cost of $30 over the life of my ownership.
If I bought a game for $60 and expect to sell it to someone for $20(because their willingness to pay was $30, but since $10 has to go to Sony, the remaining amount is $20), I expect a net cost of $40 over the life of my ownership.
So the game price increased from $30 to $40. I can weigh whether or not the game itself is worth $40 and decide whether or not I think it
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I came to this thread to moderate, but screw it.
If they weren't alienated by all of Sony's shenanigans by now they never will be. Some people will put up with anything. Me, I stopped buying Sony way back when they rooted my PC with XCP.
Why doesn't open souce gaming go forward? (Score:2)
I came to this thread to moderate, but screw it.
If they weren't alienated by all of Sony's shenanigans by now they never will be. Some people will put up with anything. Me, I stopped buying Sony way back when they rooted my PC with XCP.
I can't quite understand why open source gaming doesn't advance.
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Because there aren't all that many open source games, the ones there are don't look very good compared to commercial ones, they often have weird play mechanics, and the documentation is often poor.
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I can't speak for anyone else, but I bought a PS3 (and PS2 and Playstation) specifically to play a couple of select games. Since I've already made the investment, I'll probably continue to buy those games in new installments when they're released. However, I will make damn sure that I test each game before I buy it, so I don't make any more mistaken purchases (Black Ops, anyone?). This policy will also prevent me from purchasing any games on impulse, which I've done often in the past. (I bought Stuntman
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So Instead of being the center of my video gaming universe, my PS3 is now relegated to being a niche piece of hardware for playing a couple of games. Kind of sad, really.
That's been my PS3 since day one. I bought it primarily for the Blu-Ray player and ability to play media files via the network, which at the time was pretty reasonable given the cost of the average BD player at the time.
Once my PS3 kicks the bucket, I'll just build a proper HTPC and be done with it.
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How is someone buying a used auto a customer of Ford?
If auto dealers did something like this they'd lose customers since people would lose resale value and lose confidence in the maker. Buying a used game from Sony does not mean you will never have interesting in buying a new game from them or that you won't tell other friends about a game that you like.
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If auto dealers did something like this they'd lose customers since people would lose resale value and lose confidence in the maker.
It's like saying that when you buy a used Ford, you don't get the manufacturers 3 year / 30,000 mile warranty.
At the moment, game servers are an open-ended cost - you have no idea how long your game is going to be popular for. Some (pay once) PC games continue for years past their initial release, and the publisher has to balance a potential loss of goodwill with the costs of running servers.
It doesn't seem unreasonable ; but really, I'd prefer it if the base game cost $10 less and *everyone* had to shell o
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The only reason games companies even have the costs associated with running online servers for years after the game was sold is because they decided they wanted a slice of the dedicated server market and so took away the ability of players to host their own games.
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And clearly, it's working. There absolutely aren't any utilities to facilitate LAN play with Starcraft 2. Modern Warfare 2 doesn't have any dedicated servers. Starsiege TRIBES multiplayer was gone forever once the master servers went down.
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Because they presumably own the hardware to play the game on, and they presumably may buy certain games brand new. Why does Sony hate freedom?
Sony loves freedom (Score:2)
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...Another reason to switch to PC gaming
The smart people never left in the first place.
So now I have to pay $10.. (Score:2)
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If you're gaming online and someone claims you're being verbally abused, they're probably right.
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Clue: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/online_gaming [theoatmeal.com]
Thanks Sony (Score:3)
It's just confirms that I won't be purchasing anything from you, ever. Good job killing your potential customers.
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When they took away my Linux on the PS3, I stopped buying games. It's just a very expensive DVD player at this point, and I don't buy too many DVDs.
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They didn't take it away, you had a choice. Keep Linux and forgo PSN and any future required updates, or update the PS3 and lose Linux. Nothing stopping you from buying another PS3 just for games.
You didn't hear PS2 LInux kit owners whining so much on Slashdot because a PS2 HDD with a LInux install couldn't be used with the games that supported the HDD.
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But but that's a choice with consequences! It's not a choice if there are consequences! If there are consequences you're not free man!
I don't get it either. If someone actually used (and not just whined about) Other OS *and* it was important to them, why did they update?
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You DO realise that this have been the norm on PC for ages, right?
When you buy second hand PC games, a lot of them doesn't include mulitplayer, because the key is already used in activating an on-line multiplayer account.
Some already charge to give you a new key to create a multiplayer account for your second hand purchased games, it was even on ./ a few times.
The only difference here seems to be that Sony is forcing it on all their games, whereas on PC it's up to the publisher.
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It used to be that the key was just to prevent multiple simultaneous users of the same license key, which was eminently reasonable, until someone started using a duplicate of your key, locking you out of game servers...
More recently, the keys are bound to online accounts and are not transferrable.
The recent instances where there is bonus content enclosed with the original game with a 1-time key is actually an improvement on this ; you can still re-sell the game, something you cannot do for games that bind t
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"Second-hand trade contributes nothing to the funds of developers." nor should they. Used car sales don't support the auto-makers. (apart from replacement parts, which is a separate market). Used book sales don't support the writers or publishers. Used appliance sales don't support the manufacturers. Used home sales don't support the home builders. Nor should they. Used product markets represent the fact that there is still value in used goods, and that value can be monetized until the value has diminished
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the average game price has doubled in the past 15 years
15 years ago was 1996. The average game price in 1996 for a new PSone game was $49.99. The average game price for a new PS3 game in 2011 is $59.99
That's not double.
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And if you consider inflation that $49.99 15 years ago is more that the cost of the $59.99 games today.
What cost $49.99 in 1996 would cost $68.75 in 2010.
source - http://www.westegg.com/inflation/ [westegg.com]
so actually games have been getting cheaper as they have not been adjusting for inflation.
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According to the inflation calculator [westegg.com] $49.99 in 1996 is equivalent to $68.75 as of 2010, so not only is it not double, it's actually less than it should be (if that was the only consideration, which I know it is not).
Shit, I remember buying NES games for $49.99 back in like 1987. According to the same site, that's the equivalent of $94.66 in today's dollars, and I remember my father paying at least $200 for a Colecovision console back in 1982, the equivalent of $445.79 today.
The moral of the story is, we'v
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You DO realise that this have been the norm on PC for ages, right?
When you buy second hand PC games, a lot of them doesn't include mulitplayer, because the key is already used in activating an on-line multiplayer account.
Some already charge to give you a new key to create a multiplayer account for your second hand purchased games, it was even on ./ a few times.
The only difference here seems to be that Sony is forcing it on all their games, whereas on PC it's up to the publisher.
PC games retail at similar price points as console titles, and the hardware isn't subsidized by the manufacturer / publisher. In many cases now, you can't even resell your games when you're done with them, let alone access multiplayer content on second hand games, even if you were willing to pay the publishers to do it.
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PC games retail at similar price points as console titles
No they dont http://www.flipkart.com/search-games?query=need+for+speed+the+run&vertical=Games&dd=0&autosuggest%5Bas%5D=on&autosuggest%5Bas-submittype%5D=entered&autosuggest%5Bas-grouprank%5D=0&autosuggest%5Bas-overallrank%5D=1&_r=drPAH3HwuVmKzPUEpehnZw--&_l=UozZhYToiXmHwFhrNUuDEg--&ref=c9073aee-dd42-4ef4-8397-352e7d1709fb&selmitem= [flipkart.com] PS3 version costs double of PC Xbox version is slightly cheaper
Offline multiplayer (Score:2)
You DO realise that this have been the norm on PC for ages, right?
When you buy second hand PC games, a lot of them doesn't include mulitplayer, because the key is already used in activating an on-line multiplayer account.
At least console games are more likely to support plugging in multiple gamepads. PC games, on the other hand, are more like handheld games: each player is expected to bring his own PC, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and copy of the game.
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Yeah, because if there's one thing that's going strong on consoles, it's single-console multiplayer...there's a ton of games out there that support that, amirite?
Oh, wait...they've been phasing that out for years now, too. The only games you can play co-op on a single console anymore are cheap-o arcade games and party games like the average Wii crap. Almost everything requires each player to have a console, TV, controller, and a copy of the game (and if on the 360, Xbox Live as well).
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The only games you can play co-op on a single console anymore are cheap-o arcade games
I don't know about PlayStation 3 because nobody in my family has one, but Call of Duty series for Xbox 360 still supports two-player split screen.
party games like the average Wii crap
Since when are Wii games, or party games in general, crap? Please allow me to rephrase: "At least consoles are more likely to have party games."
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It's just confirms that I won't be purchasing anything from you, ever. Good job killing your potential customers.
Except the issue here is you're not purchasing something from Sony. If you buy a second hand game from Gamestop, Sony (or EA, Microsoft et al) is not seeing a penny of that but they still have to host your ass when you turn up to play the multiplayer.
Now one could argue that the guy who bought the game in the first place paid for your multiplayer spot. The counterargument to Sony (et al) is that if two or more people play on their service in succession that it increases the amount of time that the same nu
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Microsoft does see money in the form of XBOX Live subscriptions. That's why I don't mind paying my $4/month to use their service. I don't have to worry whether I can play my game, no matter if it is new or used. (At least until the game is considered EOL and server support is removed. Not sure if any games published for th
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And if you think Sony are alone in trying to combat used game sales then you're living in cloud cuckoo land. This is like DLC all over again. EA started this ball rolling with "project ten dollar" and others are paying heed. Sony is doing here
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A merry go round sells tickets for $5 and lets people ride as long as they like. The operator knows most people get fed up after an average of 10 spins so their prices are set accordingly to cover costs and maximize profits. But then some people start selling their tickets to other people (some of whom were waiting in the queue to buy their own ticket) for $3.
So the operator loses twice, first losing a $5 sale prospect and secondly because the average sp
To be honest, I'm not against this. (Score:3)
I don't have any modern consoles (got out of it this generation), but I don't see this as an earth shattering moment. This is good for developers who have to continuously pay to keep these online services running. Whether they intended to keep them running till a certain date or not, selling a used game to someone else gives another person access to the online services without giving the developers anything in return, which costs the developer extra money (no matter how little or much it may be). I think when you have an online component like this, the developer aught to get something in return for the use of their services considering you wouldn't have paid them a dime otherwise. I'm not sure I think it should be $10 (I would see something more in the line of $5 but whatever)
It just makes sense from their point of view and also to some others out there who are looking at it objectively.
I do expect to be modded down for this (I don't blame you, since this is such a controversial thing these days) but it's just how I feel about it.
Carification (Score:3)
Selling a used game to someone else does NOT give another person access. It TRANSFERS access from one person to another. The total number of players has not gone up.
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I realize this, however in the original case the user would have stopped playing and server load would have gone down. In the case of a second hand sale, the company has to support the new users play habits while receiving nothing extra in return. I do understand your point of view, however, that the company should assume one sale means that game can/will be used until the servers go down, but that rarely ever happens.
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It just makes sense from their point of view and also to some others out there who are looking at it objectively.
Guess who's point of view I have!
Seriously; the moaning about (and now charging for) the second hand games market like it's some sort of non-legit activity is a pretty big anti-consumer move on Sony's (and other publisher's) part.
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Well, I suppose when I forked out ~$50 for something titled "Prologue" I should have expected support to be cut after a couple of years, but since my console YLOD'ed I let it rest for a year before buying a $250 replacement (that, itself, had a Blu-Ray drive failure after one month) So, returning to play the game after a year off, I find that "online play will be discontinued in 3 weeks, please consider purchasing our new full version of the game" - oh, what's that, the full version requires a functioning
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Transferring ownership of the account should have no impact on the developer/host/game company. I agree that players should not expect a server to continue hosting games years after they have stopped selling them without receiving compensation, but this should be done through a yearly access fee or something similar. If a game passes hands ten times in a year, while another copy is held by the same owner for ten years, why should the hosting company require $100 for a single year of use from the first cop
Antisocial gaming for the win! (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't blame them for doing this, since they are businesses and businesses are out to make a profit. I don't even blame the greed because they are providing a service and they calculate their revenues based upon a single purchaser (and not subsequent purchases of the title second hand).
On the other hand, when it comes to gaming, I'm definitely a consumer. As a consumer, I don't want to spend more than I have to and that includes paying for access to servers for multiplayer games. So don't expect me to buy in to this scheme.
Hell, don't expect me to pay into this scheme even if I had money to burn since I prefer single player games to social gaming and I prefer to social gaming to multiplayer games. Which basically means that I'll take a PS3 when I want to have some fun, a Nintendo when I want to enjoy a game with friend, and basically don't care about this scheme because I don't give a damn about playing 'alone' against human opponents who I will never meet.
Of course, your opinion may differ. But I don't care. When I game it's about me (and maybe my real life friends).
I'm on the fence here... (Score:2)
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Is GameStop any worse than used book stores? How about used clothing stores? If developers want to make their software licenses one user non-transferable, they need to get very up-front about it, quiet, subtle after the sale policy changes that have that effect are a good way to enrage your potential future customers.
I, and my children, can put our PS3 away and forget about it, we did it for a year just recently, and if it gets too annoying, we'll do it again.
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Because they are entitled to get paid? This is basic first sale doctrine they are entitled to get paid when they sell the copy. By your logic when I sell my car the new owner should have to pay GM for the privilege of using the vehicle they made?
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Will it impact used prices? (Score:2)
This is one of those costs that probably won't be fully passed on to customers - where I live anyways...
New Game: $60
Used Game: $50 + $10 PSN Pass.
Why would you ever buy the used game? Gamestop has to decrease the amount they charge for the new game or they swallow the cost of the PSN Pass themselves to make it worth a customer buys the Used Game. Otherwise they lose an entire console's worth of used games.
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This is one of those costs that probably won't be fully passed on to customers - where I live anyways...
New Game: $60 Used Game: $50 + $10 PSN Pass.
Why would you ever buy the used game? Gamestop has to decrease the amount they charge for the new game or they swallow the cost of the PSN Pass themselves to make it worth a customer buys the Used Game. Otherwise they lose an entire console's worth of used games.
If I'm interested in only the single player component, then why not?
Good for buyers, bad for sellers and stores (Score:2)
Looks like the people who lose out here will be either the stores (used games no longer sell for as much) or the people who sell their used games back to the stores. And seeing as the prices paid by stores for used games are already shockingly low, I doubt they could take another $10 off the offer price.
As a buyer, I should get the advantage of an extra $10 discount on the used game if I don't want multiplayer. And my choice is nice and easy - if the used game isn't at least $10 cheaper, I'm not buying it
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Looks like the people who lose out here will be either the stores (used games no longer sell for as much) or the people who sell their used games back to the stores.
Or?
It will be both.
What ever will Game Stop do? (Score:2)
Here's the scenario I imagine a few months down the road:
*dials phone*
"Hello, Game Stop!"
"Hi, do you have any copies of {first party Sony title}."
"I'm sorry, we don't carry that title in either New or Used."
"Why?"
"Sony won't let us." (ed: and you know that's how it will be phrased, too)
*dials phone again*
"Hello, Best Buy"
"Hi, do you have any copies of {first party Sony title}."
"No, sorry."
"Man, does no one carry {first party Sony title}"
*dials phone once more*
"Hello, Wal-Mart"
"Hi, do you have any copies of
Not surprising (Score:2)
Game publishers have want dot limit the used market as much as possible - since they view, rightly or wrongly, that every used game sale is potentially a lost new game sale and money they don't get a cut of even if it's not.
This is a way to depress used game value and get money in their pockets - a win - win for them. While gamers may get games for less now, used prices will drop as well so there is less incentive to sell; limiting the used game market and making it less attractive; form both a revenue aspe
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Interesting point. But they would be helping Gamestop continue to sell their games used without giving them a cut of that, so I would expect that factor to enter the equation as well. Preventing that was the entire point of this move, so I don't think they will then turn around and reverse it or diminish it quite so easily. It will be a little more difficult of a negotiation than your scenario posits.
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Sony doesn't consider a buyer of used games to be a legitimate customer, since a used game gives Sony no income. Piracy has nothing to do with this, except that it's something else which also gives Sony no income but which sounds better to complain about in press releases.
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Long story short, people are worse at recognizing value reductions than cost increases. That's why in stores food comes in smaller and smaller packages until a new "economy size" package is introduced. That is why politicians create tons of product and service taxes rather than increase the income tax. They'd rather take resale value out of the game than increase prices and people will protest less.
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Sony doesn't consider a buyer of used games to be a legitimate customer, since a used game gives Sony no income. Piracy has nothing to do with this, except that it's something else which also gives Sony no income but which sounds better to complain about in press releases.
There is actually an upside to this practice, anti-social (cheating, verbally abusive players etc) will have to pony up an additional $10 each time their content ID is banned or blacklisted from online play.
The laws and restrictions on the resale market of games and movies are way more relaxed in the USA than the rest of the world, for some reason the consumer rights are far better than anywhere else in the world when it comes to the resale of games and movies.
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Fffft, this has nothing to do with piracy, which is miniscule because most people are too lazy, and everything to do with used game sales.
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PSN was never secure. It just wasn't obvious yet where the insecure pieces were at earlier. Have you considered that the idiot executives who said the platform was safe at any level were the real problem here? They should have been all kinds of nervous about the sheer number of ways their data was insufficiently secure. Instead they were arrogant and decided to challenge people with real hacking stills to come rumble with them. There was no question who is going to get the beatdown when it's pirates vs
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>>You bought into a DRM scheme. You were stupid, now you learned the hard way. Consider this a tuition fee and don't be stupid again.
DRM scheme?
Most people bought the PS3 (or prefer buying PS3 versions of games over Xbox 360) precisely *because* multiplayer is free, and XBL always seemed to be a greedy grasp for money.
With this move (which will just annoy me, as I hate punching in those tediously long codes every time I buy a game now) the PS3 has lost its only competitive advantage over the Xbox.
Alon
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The multiplayer is still free.... as long as you buy the game new.
If you buy the game used, you pay a one time "used game tax" of $10 per title. This isn't a reoccurring fee like it is with Xbox Live. That's a dramatic difference.
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The multiplayer is still free.... as long as you buy the game new.
If you buy the game used, you pay a one time "used game tax" of $10 per title. This isn't a reoccurring fee like it is with Xbox Live. That's a dramatic difference.
I totally agree, what I don't understand is why are people ok with Steam and other PC Games publishers practising this but get their knickers all bunched up when consoles try to follow the same DRM model.
Cheaper second hand games with an optional $10 fee to play them online seems totally reasonable to me, but I tend to keep the games I buy, and buy them brand new.
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I totally agree, what I don't understand is why are people ok with Steam and other PC Games publishers practising this but get their knickers all bunched up when consoles try to follow the same DRM model.
I'm betting a lot of the people that disagree with Sony doing this bullshit also disagree with Steam and other platforms with lock-in like Battle.net.
I propose that there is a third option, which are the people that weigh the pros and cons and decide what is more important to them. Personally, I won't touch a modern Blizzard game due to the Battle.net requirement (not legally, anyway), and the only thing I use Steam for is MMO's and Free to Play games because they've historically been tied to one user anyw
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Not everyone will care about the multiplayer and not everyone who was prepared to sell their copy at $x will be prepared to sell it at $(x-10). So ultimately things will probablly settle somewhere between the two extremes, used value of games with this will be reduced but probablly not by as much as $10.
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With this move (which will just annoy me, as I hate punching in those tediously long codes every time I buy a game now) the PS3 has lost its only competitive advantage over the Xbox.
Well it hasn't really. If you buy brand new games it's no different. It's only second hand sales which are affected.
However I think it is very likely that if second hand games are effectively hobbled that they'll retail for less to compensate for the price of reactivation. So a game which might have retailed for $50 second hand might retail for $40 if it's substantially a multiplayer title. The main losers here will be people selling (not buying) second hand games and the likes of Gamestop for slapping s
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I regularly do LAN parties where 1 person will bring a PS3 and 3 or 4 will bring games. This will require that everyone that has a game at home will need to bring their own PS3 with them as well. This fucks up a lot more than re-selling of games.
It's more likely to be tied to their PSN ID than the actual console itself. I don't think you can connect to the PSN with the same account multiple times, but I might be wrong.
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To play LAN over PS3 you still need the physical disc in the machine to play so it's not like you can just quickly burn off a copy of one of the games your friend brings and play it LAN.
I understand they want to go after the used games market but they have no way of differentiating same household or friends having LANs with their PS3s so I don't really support it, although if they could apply it
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I haven't seen serial codes on PC games, though I see a lot of DRM. I avoid DRM if I can. I don't do multiplayer competitive games so maybe this goofiness is more common there.
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Personally I would buy preowend PC games if I could, but it seems so many now and days are being linked to some form of account with the developer when bought new, thus if you try to resell it, the key wont work since it'll still be linked to my account.
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Yeah, well, small fry like Good Old Games or Indie Pack are even nicer. That's why I specified LARGE.
But at the large company level Valve is a great compared to someone like Activision-Blizzard, MS, or Sony. They let me do things with my games (like mod them) that nobody else is willing to do, or sell them so cheaply it doesn't matter, or constantly update stuff that I bought years ago for free. It's all sadly relative.
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Between Xbox live online forcing you to pay yearly, and now PS3 wanting you to pay extra for used games, there simply is not a free online solution like you get with PC. So as much as my friends want me to play online with them. I'll just tell them no, and wait for the next generation of consoles.
Your tradeoff is, now almost all the PC games you play free online have no resale value whatsoever..I don't see how that isn't worse than having to pay $10 to get online multiplayer features in a game you bought second hand, and can resell afterwards.
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Just more complete.
You will be required to present fully nude images of yourself and everyone else in a ten-block vicinity before the console will progress beyond the EULA screen, and grant a perpetual, re-assignable copyright to the console maker for the images, so they can make a few more bucks on the side
Login validation will require that all players present the same image.
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Then why not make the original game 10$ cheaper, but disable the MP until the player pays an extra fee?
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Then why not make the original game 10$ cheaper, but disable the MP until the player pays an extra fee?
Isn't this the Microsoft model essentially? except for the part where the original game isn't $10 cheaper..
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But a lot of people still play NFS 2, NFS MW,CS1.6,Mario (the 8 bit version),Dave,etc..
books wear out after being read 2-3 times
DVD's cost almost the same (sometimes even more) as games, but give you much less than a game, so the additional profits are already built into the price.
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If your books wear out after 2-3 readings, then you do not take very good care of your property. There are books that have been around for decades at the library and are still in good condition.
"DVD's cost almost the same (sometimes even more) as games"
Seriously???? When was the last time you saw a DVD cost $60 or more??
Answer: NEVER!!!! ( I am excluding imports and DVD collections like TV series, because you are getting much more content than a typical D
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DVD's: well, DVD's cost the equivalent of $15-20 for English movies
Games start at the equivalent of $8-10 (The GTA series is the cheapest) for PC
Maybe the Indian market pricing is a bit out of sync...
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I've been thinking about which Sony WTF I will state as this year's epic WTF in my top 10. The candidate list is getting a bit too long. Security breach? Month and a half outage in services? Anti-lawsuit EULA? Punishment for consumers who buy used games? SE Xperia x10 mini not getting updates?
Instead of listing one of Sony's greatest hit in 2011's WTF-listings, i suggest we should list top ten of Sony Fails fot this year...
I just wish there would be gaming console that's manufacturer isn't straight from hell.
There just aren't that many manufacturers who are willing to out of pocket subsidize gaming hardware, unfortunately, so I don't see too much competition in the console space in the near future.
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...and that's only 2011.
As a company they don't seem to actually want any customers.
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Of course not, you can of course sell the access code (since you haven't used) with your used game or to someone who bought a used game elsewhere. Though it's a hard transaction to make since you can't test the code works without using up that once only use.
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"Microsoft doesn't let you use product codes more than once because they'd lose money if you re-use their product."
That's why many of my cheaper clients use Linux for basic computing needs. And it is also the reason I am fluent in dealing with small end business needs in regards to Windows and Linux.