Back in my day, when you bought a game, you owned it. Sure, that concept still stands in many different forms of media, but with the emergence of digital purchases over the past few years, the question of ownership has become quite the hot topic. Sony’s stance on used games received a massive response at last month’s E3, which was a solid sign that people will continue to fight for their rights to content they've purchased. It’s something we haven’t quite figured out with non-physical media, though, and Andrew House, the group CEO of the PlayStation business, understands that.
"It became an expression of a little bit of concern bubbling up around the subject of what ownership means in an age of digital content overall," House told The Guardian. "We and other entertainment industry players need to be very conscious of that and very careful. Bringing it back to the fundamentals again, we need to be fair and to think of the consumer experience first."
It took Microsoft a little bit longer to think of the consumer with the Xbox One. Since E3, the company has pulled back on many of its DRM and connectivity policies, and main man Don Mattrick has decided to exit the building. Microsoft has some work to do before its message is clear, but for Sony, it’s all about thinking of the consumer and delivering a machine that developers can make great games on.
"We have a new development environment, that developers are telling us is significantly easier to make great games for, and we've undertaken a significant amount of outreach to smaller developers,” he continued. “And the net result is that we're seeing a lot of developers coming out of the mobile space, and I think that's a tremendously positive trend for console gaming. Essentially, we have access to a whole new set of talent in gaming that we didn't have before."
Even with a bit of pressure coming from third parties, Sony stood strong on what it believed was right.
"We didn't feel any sense that we needed to respond to any external pressure," House said.
