Sony's lawyers really picked a strange hill to die on here... even if they win, the precedence will screw over Sony, at least in marketing.
As is usual in the modern world (and probably since the beginning of time since there's nothing new under the sun for the last ~2,000-3,000 years), not enough people will care for it to have any measurable screwing effect.
But yeah, hopefully the community and ecosystem is aligned enough to massively fuck Sony over this, vote with your wallets people.
If the PS6 is digital only and Xbox doubles down on discs it might be a slam dunk victory. Not all players understand or care about it now, but if they explain it well in the launch window and combine that with their back compat history I think they have a good chance to win.
Even Microsoft knows that gaming is a competitive market and pulling customers from PlayStation is better than trying to extract as much as possible from your existing user base. One Game Pass sub is worth more than marketplace fees from 3 extra games you would normally buy used.
Heh, isn't that a move against resale as well? The disc will only work once for disc-to-digital won't it?
And possibly get tied to a specific xbox account.
That's what lawyers and other corporate drones think, but they are plain wrong.
The only reason why people want to buy a copy from second hand is because they can't afford the price of a new one. In reality these people will never ever buy straight from Sony, simply because it's too expensive for them. Simple as that. They much more likely to turn to free pirate copies instead.
Personally to me the value of a temporary license to a game is at best $10. Why would I rent a game for $60?
Otherwise you're right, it's absurd that license fee is the same as the price of an owned copy.
Still, not as bad as the "digital licensing" hell we're in when it comes to video games, but there is zero ownership at the end of it.
This already happened... It's called subscription or mortgage loan.
Most households don't have that kind of money at once, they are already forced into a loan with regular payments. This means not the buyer but the bank owns the car until the last penny is paid.
And in some cases your car's on-board software needs a constant connection with the vendor's servers (meaning it must be up and you must pay for a license too). https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/02/what-happens-to-a-car-w...
It's even worse with houses. Most gen Zs will never ever own their homes, they are implicitly forced to rent only (no ownership in sight). https://fortune.com/article/gen-z-giving-up-on-buying-a-home...
Brave new world.
It doesn't.