Sony Reveals PlayStation 4: Are You Excited for the New Console?

I'm excited about increased hardware specs, but Sony's anti-consumer attitude is really grating, and their recent shenanigans regarding used games have me fuming.*

I buy new games almost almost exclusively, but if Sony actually ties game licenses to a specific console in its most anti-consumer move ever, I'm out this go-around. I will not support a platform that doesn't allow me to play my games on a new console down the road. Even if they allow exceptions for people whose consoles break, I'm completely opposed to the idea of being dependent on a company's permission (or even their continued existence) to play games I've bought.

The controlling direction that Sony (and maybe Microsoft too?) is taking gaming is worrying to me, and Blizzard is even worse with their "always-online" DRM in Diablo III. Culture should not have a time limit dependent on how long a company chooses to support a game, or how often they choose to let you move your licenses to a new device. I can still play my old NES/SNES/etc. cartridges today long after support has ended, and sometimes I do. At least through emulation, my great-great-etc.-grandchildren way down the line will be able to do the same. Will we be able to say the same thing for today's generation of games, or tomorrow's, especially after 25%, 50%, 75% of the hardware systems break down? Diablo for instance is a classic game series, and I wonder if anyone in the world will be able to play Diablo III fifteen years from now...quite possibly not. Making used games unplayable will have a similar effect, except the "countdown to unplayability" won't be limited to a single game but infect an entire platform.

Nowadays, I'm a lot more excited for things like Ouya and Valve's Steambox: There are a lot of obstacles to them supplanting the major closed console manufacturers, but they promise hope for the future during a time that otherwise might become known as gaming's "dark age" just a few decades from now.

*Fighting a crusade against used games isn't even a good business decision either. Publishers see gamer A who buys new (maybe on day 1) and gamer B who buys used, and they're using heavy-handed tactics to force a new purchase from gamer B...but instead, they might lose both. People who buy new games - especially on launch day - often factor resellability into their value calculations. If they know they can't resell a game (and potentially put the money toward another new game!), it may not be worth dropping $60 on it. Meanwhile, people who buy used are simply at another area of the demand curve, where their strike price is lower. Eliminating used games won't get them to buy new on day one: They'll simply wait for the price of new copies to reach the price they individually consider worth it...and if it never does, they'll never buy. (If they felt like they "had to have it," they'd already be buying new on day one.) The lower the price goes, the more people are willing to buy, so the popularity of used games really only demonstrates that the optimal price-point might be lower, and it might be optimal to aggressively reduce prices faster as time goes on. (There will still always be used sales if allowed, since the used price will always be less than new, but if you're selling at an optimal price point, who cares?)