Ever since next-gen rumors first began to surface, talk of anti-used game measures have been a major topic of discussion. Since then, the bulk of the gaming community has dismissed such an approach, as doing so could very well be suicidal for any company bold enough to go forward with it.
That line of thinking may very well end today, as it appears Sony has filed a patent for some sort of NFC (near-field communication) technology that will do just that. The patent was first spotted by NeoGAF user gofreak, but we still have yet to track down the official source of the patent itself. As such, we'll have to treat this as rumor for the time being.
The text from the alleged patent is filled with a whole bunch of technical babble, but the general gist of it is that in Sony's next console, games would communicate with the system via NFC, tethering the game to that specific machine, thereby preventing the resale of the software.
Naturally, this opens a whole new can of worms. What if the console breaks? Is this somehow tied to the user's PSN account? Does this mean the console needs to be online at all times?
We'll be sure to fill you in as soon as we know more, but don't expect Sony to confirm the validity of this report anytime soon.
[Via]
