A US patent application filed by Sony in September, that aims to cut out the use of used games, something that could be used with Playstation 4 caused a stir yesterday.
The news caused investors to bail on GameStop with the retailer that relies heavily on used game sales for profits to drop as much as 7 percent in yesterday's trading (according to Gamasutra.
This is how Sony's idea is described in the filing:
"When the game is to be played, the reproduction device conveys the disc ID and a player ID to the use permission tag. The use permission tag stores the terms of use of the game and determines whether a combination of the disc ID and the player ID conveyed from the reproduction device fulfils the terms of use or not."
Some analyst such as Wedbush-Morgan's Michael Pachter, however feel that it's unlikely that Sony will make use of a system that is likely to put off consumers. Remains to be seen how DRM will be handled next gen.