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Eidos President: Next Xbox Uses Watermarked Discs
Sony revealed its next-gen plans a week ago, with the announcement of the PlayStation 4. At the event, the company took a step to alleviate players' fears that used-game sales would be blocked. Microsoft may be going a different route.
MCV India spoke with Eidos' life president Ian Livingstone about the possibility of a digital-only gaming landscape. First, he addressed the plain fact that broadband Internet hasn't yet reached an install base high enough to justify getting rid of disc-based media wholesale. Then things got interesting.
“With the next Xbox, you supposedly have to have an internet connection, and the discs are watermarked, whereby once played on one console it won’t play on another," Livingston said. "So I think the generation after that will be digital-only.”
If true, that could change the way console players look at games. Would games be playable on a set number of systems before they stopped working? Would used gaming be a thing of the past? Would it be suicide for Microsoft to try and take on this approach unilaterally? It certainly isn't the first time we've heard rumblings about this watermarking strategy.
Microsoft supposedly is hosting an event this spring where the company will be talking about its next-gen plans. This isn't the kind of subject that executives like to discuss when they're unveiling a new console, but if Livingstone's right you can expect to see executives squirming and dodging the subject in interviews within a few months.
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