We can all be wrong sometimes. Even I have known to be wrong once or twice in life, and one of those few times was within the past week when I said that Sony would use an intrusive DRM like Microsoft have. Well, I couldn’t be more wrong and I couldn’t be happier to be wrong. That is if Sony are telling us the whole truth.
It’s actually all a bit of a mess really. Sony have already announced that they wont require an always online connection and that they personally wont interfere with used games. Kotaku reported that both of these points were announced back in February and also again earlier this week. All of this was initially announced by Shuhei Yoshida, Sony’s worldwide president, and then a representative stated that there is no additional clarification, but any changes would be reported.
The one caveat to be mentioned is that, also according to Yoshida, the publishers will be in charge of DRM on the games. What this effectively means is that yes, there will be used game DRM on the PS4 (or at least PS4 games) but it is not implemented or controlled by Sony themselves. While this does make them the good guys in the current Sony vs Microsoft funfair, there is still some time to go.
In my pessimistic nature I do also have to point out that there is still time to go before the launch. Sony could still be biding their time to reveal the bad news or even make certain changes as more reactions come in. My advice, don’t get your hopes up.