Here's the deal in a nutshell, from what I've taken:
Everytime you buy a game and put it in your PS3, the system will assign that copy of the game to your PS3. The game will now only work in THAT PS3 and THAT PS3 only. Have a friend want to borrow your game? Too bad. Unless he "buys" it off of you and has PSOnline transfer the disc's rights to your system, the disc will not work.
The Sony Spin on this is that they're trying to make it look like they're doing you a favor. They basically say "You know how your MGS eventually gets to the point where you no longer play it anymore, and just starts collecting dust on your shelf? Well we're giving you a way to get money back from it by selling it to someone else, and letting THEM enjoy such a grand game! Cool, huh?!"
Well apparently they want us to forget that we've ALWAYS been able to sell games back to other places to get a bit of money back for the copies whenever we got bored with them. Now, they've taken away our choice of where to sell it to, and forced us to use Sony's online service as the middleman.
You can no longer let a friend simply borrow a game to see if it's any good. If they want to play the game on their system, they either have to buy a copy of their own, or buy your copy off of you. No sharing. If you decide to sell your copy to your friend, you will be paid in "Entitlements" (PS3's version of Marketplace Points). So you can sell your old games to gain points toward buying some other PS3 product, but not for simple cash. Sony wants to make sure that money stays with them.
Now the big question I have is...how will this work unless EVERY PS3 is connected to Sony's servers?? If my PS3's not connected to the net, how can MY PS3 know if this copy of MGS4 is attatched to YOUR PS3 or not already? It really can't, and the way the patent is worded, it doesn't even take that into account. If it doesn't see the "rights" to the disc on the system it's playing in, it automatically checks the Sony servers, whether it's connected or not. You cannot play your PS3 game until it is registered to that console by being registered on Sony's servers. That REALLY has me wondering what happens to those without internet yet. How will they get to play their games??
Oh, and there's also a broad mention of Transfer Fees when "selling" a game to a friend. What this could definitely mean is that when you sell your game to your friend for, say, $10, there could be an extra $2 or so transfer fee added on top of that, to go to either Sony or the game developer. Perhaps it's like Ebay, where a certain percent of the selling price goes to the middleman.
That's pretty much the jist of what I got from the article.
Simply put: Goodbye to borrowing PS3 games with friends for a day or so. Goodbye to renting PS3 games from anywhere. Goodbye to having a choice on where to sell back games to places. And perhaps even, Goodbye to being allowed to play your PS3 if it isn't hooked up to Sony Online.
Sorry, but I see no good to come of this.
