Tag: nfc technology

Industry experts are speculating that the company is beginning a strategy to cease disc resale.

Observers of the video and mobile gaming industry have noticed a new patent that has been issued to Sony, in which it has gained the ownership of an NFC technology that would make it virtually impossible for used PlayStation 4 game discs to be resold.

This strategy would apply a new form of ID scanning through the console so the exclusive owner can be identified.

Though many console and mobile gamers love to grab the latest games as soon as they are released, others prefer to wait a while so that those who like to have the games right away will finish with them and sell their used copies at a lower price. This is the bane of the existence of many game manufacturers as it gives people an opportunity to obtain the discs in a way that won’t generate full retail royalties. New efforts are always being made to help to prevent this activity, such as the patented NFC technology that has now been registered by Sony.

It is expected that NFC technology built right into a console and enabled on a disc will serve this purpose.

Near field communication (NFC technology) is most commonly found in certain credit cards as well as in the most recent models of smartphones. Typically it is used for mobile marketing as well as smartphone payments. However, the new patent received by Sony will allow the technique to be used in the PlayStation 4 so that the console will be able to link a specific enabled disc with an individual user’s account. This will allow the owner of the disc to be identified from the first time that it is used.

The speculations about the use of this NFC technology are not without evidence. The patent document that was discovered linked to the Sony Computer Entertainment Japan stated that “When the game is to be played, the reproduction device conveys the disc ID and a player ID to the use permission tag.”

That same document also descried that “The use permission tag stores the terms of use of the game and determines whether a combination of the disc ID and the player ID conveyed from the reproduction device fulfils the terms of use or not.” This indicates that it would not be possible for the owners of a game disc to sell or trade that product, as it would be connected specifically to their own consoles.

Though there were a number of missteps throughout 2012, many believe 2013 will turn things around.

Last year, many of the players in the mobile payments industry had expected the use of smartphone wallets and similar services to take off, but the actual figures fell far short of the mark.

This year, experts in the industry believe that 2013 will represent a major turnaround in this area.

That said, the experts don’t believe that it will be Google, Isis, and the other joint venture mobile payments wallets that will take off this year. Instead, the attention is turning toward the banks that have been lining up to make their own way into the world of smartphone transactions.

This opinion is shared among a panel of 200 mobile payments industry experts.

This panel is made up of industry executives, insiders, and developers, who all share the belief that 2013 will be the year that is the most compelling for consumer mobile payments applications. They also stated that social networking and location apps will play an important role in the industry as a whole.

The results of a recently conducted survey by Chetan Sharma Consulting have shown that mobile payments and mcommerce will not only take off, but the power behind them will not be the traditional internet players. Instead, it will be the traditional financial companies.

According to the participants in the survey, they feel that Google, carriers, and the various popular new startups such as Square have had their chance to appeal to consumers and make it big, but that as a whole, they failed to make the impact that they had been hoping to make. Instead, it is the turn of the large credit card companies (such as Visa and MasterCard) and the banks and other established financial companies (such as PayPal) to step in and clean up the damage that was left behind.

It is those companies, said the survey participants, who will make the largest difference in mobile payments, and that will offer consumers the mobile security level and the type of services that they have been waiting to see before taking part.