Sony To Adopt Online Pass

The battle against pre-owned games, as mentioned in yesterday’s news piece about Tesco jumping on the pre-owned bandwagon, continues, with Sony now getting involved.  The publishing giant is reportedly planning a similar system to the ‘Online Pass’ which was introduced by EA some time ago to monetise pre-owned games by charging a fee to play the multiplayer modes online.  This tactic was swiftly filched by both THQ and Ubisoft who are also introducing it and has caused division among gamers, some of whom see merit in the scheme, while others, are obviously unhappy.

“On the principle of making online portions of the game available or unlocked from the disc-based release for a fee, we’re broadly supportive of that,”  Said Andrew House, Sony’s European president who goes on to say that, “we’re exploring actively the same option for our own content.”

With the industry feeling the pinch from both piracy and the sizable pre-owned market, such decisive action from the giants was only a matter of time and now that one, namely EA, has hit on a seemingly foolproof idea, expect more to follow suit, especially if Sony also veers down this route.

Source: GI.biz

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