Sony Moving to Serial Numbers with PS3?

I can hardly wait to see how this gets commented on. The vitriol and anger are sure to be endlessly entertaining.

This is common (more than many may think) it business computing. Not a big deal for most.

Maybe they realized that game companies actually loose more money from people sharing/buying used games than from piracy...

They need to stop...just....stop. They need to accept the fact that there will be pirates no matter what and the reality is that the majority of the world's gamers are not pirates. Hampering legitimate users by removing Linux or doing constant firmware updates does almost nothing to stop pirates and just makes legitimate users feel terrible about Sony's products.

PS3 game, Serial number like a PC game and looks worse than a PC game.
XBox 360 game, no serial number and looks like the PS3 game.

Gee.. no advantage there for the PS3 ^_^. I think this move would only hurt sales of PS3s. Users who buy console games do so because they don't want to deal with serial numbers and crazy DRM (at least the hardware DRM doesn't annoy users who actually buy their games) and just want to play the darn game. I don't think this will affect the Wii, but for users who choose between a PS3 or a 360 this can only help 360 sales.

hmm... this would not be good for gamefly... not one bit

Well looks like console gaming took another nasty hit like us pc gamers.

When will they learn? These corporations need to adapt to the market. The market dictates that barriers will always be circumvented.

Netflix is a shining example. I can get movies fo' free through torrent. However, this can be a tedious process for certain movies, formats, etc. That's where Netflix comes in. I pay for Netflix because it offers what torrent doesn't; convenience. I can instantly stream HD content on demand, and through a slick interface. $8 a month? excellent.

In Europe they have Spotify, a free, ad-supported music service that is legal, profitable, and convenient!

The market has shown time and time again that it will not bend to fit the needs of the corporations. Rather, the market has shown that charging exorbitant prices and restricting access leads to more piracy, not less.

You can kiss console game rentals goodbye.

You know if they were discounting new games by how much I can get for selling them back to gamestop this would be OK. Instead they're just scrambling to take as large a chunk of legal markets like the used one.
Clearly this isn't going to bother pirates one bit.

For more information see gun control laws.

i think this will do Sony much more harm than good... there will be allways piracy and a market for pirate games, imo in a way i think it drives hardware sales if it is control'd.. now i for don't buy pirate games, i don't even watch pirate dvd's (i like the proper thing), but there are parts of the world that the moral implications of using pirate software is questionable in povety stricken society's... as for serial keys these will just be pirated anyway.. ppl won't buy a game to spend 20 minutes trying to work out if a 0 is a o or a 1 is an I spending multiple failed attempts then spamming the publisher forums complaining there game is defunct.. and if they link the serial keys with online accounts then that would be even worse, for e.g i would like to play bioshock again but i cannot remember my log in details so screw that.. half life 2? well as i have an original release copy, steam hates my serial key for some reason? and as for galactic civilisations? i have bought the addons 3 times.. i could go on.... i AS A GAMER HATE IT!!!!!!!!

Ya, that isnt going to stop anything. One of these days they will realize that most sales are lost because you can make an acct on a friend's console and download ALL of their online purchases. That is a bigger hit than piracy will ever be.
Want more people buying copies? Sell them for cheaper!
The best thing that ever happened to the music industry was piracy. Now I can buy high quality MP3/wav files for super cheap, and don't mind doing it. A CD that use to cost $12 new is now only $1/song or $5 for a bundle. We don't mind paying that!
Make fun games that are $20 with the occasional $40 blockbuster and sales will really fly!

This'll just move more people towards the 360. Not a smart move by Sony.

Much like preventing kids from meeting child predators on the Internet, you will never solve this issue. Someone will always find a way to pirate. Every website ever made for kids is NOT full proof, anyone can anonymously make their own unlimited amount of usernames and lie about their ages. There's an easy fix for that, but the problem is, is that it's world wide. If the entire planet was all one country, it'd be a different story.

Maybe the whole world should take down the Internet and we should just start over. Not gunna happen, we're back to square one.

That would just turn me to hacking and pirating, although in reality, I would hardly get affected by it. I hate how greedy the game companies, are though. If they want a piece of the used game pie, then start a used game service for goodness sake. I hate the digital world we're getting in because of the confusion between what we own and what we don't own. Software isn't like buying the desk or chair your sitting in. You can resell those if you choose and no one gets angry. You resell a used video game and suddenly your looked down upon. I hate not having something that I can physically say I own.
Back to the subject, as long as consumers are given physical disks with their games on them, then they should be able to sell them used as long as they want. Don't be pricks game industry, used car sales eat into car manufacturers, but they aren't putting finger print readers on their cars so that no one else may ever own them.

Feels like this could be true, and possibly very easy for them to 'turn on'. It was rumored prior to the PS3 launch in 2006 that Sony would implement this system. The thought at the time was that it was designed to kill used game sales.

http://www.gamesradar.com/ps3/news [...] 3157765035

It never happened. I'd bet that it was entirely GameStop keeping that from occurring.

Just a quick observation....... how many people are playing pirated games on PS3s ???

It's not a PC, where you can *click* on a site, *click* on a torrent, *click* to install, and bam you're playing a pirated version of whatever game... I myself personally don't know a single person who is playing pirated games on their PS3, or XBox 360 for that matter.

i dont understand why they are spending millions on this, yes the master key has been reliased
but about 99.99% dont know how to use it

so its useless to them
inorder to use the key you need to write a script for it to be usefull

Preventing the sale of used games, along with the recent tendency to never reduce the price on old games (even after several years), is just companies raising prices by 200% just because they can. To the industry, you buying a single game new and twenty used in a year is no better than you buying just that single new game, as eliminating the used market would cause. I buy games used because I don't feel they are worth $60, or dont want to risk $60 on an unknown product, not because I'm not interested in supporting the developers or couldn't afford to buy them new.

Ideally, no used game market would mean developers would actually reduce the prices on new games sooner to cater to the market that obviously exists, as they'd still be making something upwards of 90% profit on each sale. Unfortunately, if the current trend of selling two or three year old releases for $60 suggests anything, publishers are of the attitude that if you weren't willing to pay $60 when the game launched, you shouldn't ever play it.

I seriously agree with every comment saying that Sony just needs TO STOP.
This will negatively impact the gaming industry, namely consoles (er, PS3)
I like to borrow games from my friends all the time, and vise versa. I lent my buddy Read Dead Redemption and he lent me Assassin's Creed. No serials. No nothing.
As if it isn't already crystal clear, Sony is CLEARLY doing this for corporate rights and security reasons. Totally draining the existing social experience here. With the Xbox, put any disk in any system, even copy your gamer profile, done deal. No, not with Sony. They're turning into the goddamn Apple of the gaming industry. I may have to shell out the 60 bucks for Black Ops for 360 to boycott the s*** PSN network and not experience the worst network connection of any console game I've ever played.
Over and out.

Well I was buying a ps3 just to hack but then changed my stance to use it legit. But after reading this, why would anyone have a legit ps3? So telling people that they cant do something to a computer thats in their home that they own wasnt enough now your telling people that they cant sell items that they bought.

This just goes to show you what Ive felt for about 2 years. This shows you that you never own ANYTHING. Were all leasing or renting items that we paid for and the courts are letting this happen. While others hack, I buy legit. I have over 50 games between my gaming rig and my 360 but this honestly will change my stance on future purchases. I like to make money on the back end selling old games for new ones but thats going to be a thing of the past.

Thank you Sony for making it an easy choice to hack and play 'backup' games on my ps3. My mistake for trying to serve you as a legit customer.

Sony will not go through with this. If so, there out of the console business.

But someone will figure out a way to bypass it anyway....

gsxr, they can dump the ps3's code now, in a few years they wont be able to stop them becasue they will be able to have a perminant fix liek the pandora battery with psp first and second generation

*Select Stock Holdings*
Click!
*Confirm sale of Sony Stock?*
Click!

Sony... You are overreacting. Nintendo has a thousand times more pirated games, and they don't resort this this idea. And just because your console is hacked, you have to piss off all the gamers for you to earn every single penny you could have lost from pirating.

If this becomes a reality, then we really have no point in buying consoles anymore then. Just buy a PC, the way it's meant to be played.

I hate this idea like everyone else however, I will not complain *IF* the code will allow me to trade in for a downloadable/ Direct to hard drive version. I upgraded my drive a while back to 320GB and if this feature were to become real I'd gladly go up to 500GB. If I end up buying a game and have to put in the serial and then if I change my HD or want to lend it to a friend and this serial shit gives a problem I will have a real problem with Sony. I will not take the disadvantages of downloadable games in Disc format, it just doesn't make sense. If I have to deal with DRM like downloadable games from PSN, at least give me the advantages they would bring like all my games downloaded to hard drive.

More and more piracy will just give the big players a good reason to move entirely to Cloud gaming.. which I'd do anything to try and stop.

I think Sony are entitled to release as many patches as they want; the step they're thinking about might be a bit far though.