Sony Sued For Limiting Purchases Of Games To Playstation Store
Sony is at the center of a lawsuit for restricting online purchases of selected PlayStation exclusive products to the PlayStation Store, which, according to merchants and consumers, unfairly monopolizes digital game prices. The class action filed by consumers accuses Sony of having an unlawful monopoly, Bloomberg reports. According to the lawsuit, this is because Sony restricts the purchase of digital PlayStation games to its store and does not allow them to be sold elsewhere.
The fight for exclusivity has been a cornerstone of the game on the home console for years, with exclusive games for the console seen as a system vendor. Xbox has gained ground in this division after the purchase of Bethesda Softworks, while PlayStation has long dominated. As the war of the ninth generation of consoles comes to a head, Sony has doubled its investment in exclusive PlayStation games in recent years.
No doubt the recent rumors of Sony’s involvement in a legal battle with Nintendo over the PlayStation Store are shocking, but not surprising.
On the business side of things, this is a fairly simple step: there is no point in discontinuing a service that will fall by the wayside when PlayStation 5 starts ramping up hardware production. It is a mistake for consumers who no longer have access to their favorite games, movies, and music from the online store.
This is nothing new, but the scalping problem has also reached game developers, which is a nuisance for PS5 owners. With Sony and Microsoft offering their next-gen systems at astronomical prices from resellers, British politicians are calling for laws to prevent daylight robbery from continuing. This has become an increasing problem as games slowly become digital, and while there is nothing to worry about, it will certainly be a major nuisance for all PS5 owners, especially after the introduction of the PS4.
Sony’s PlayStation 5 is one of the most futuristic devices to hit the market recently, and it’s certainly not without controversy.
In 2019, Sony will no longer allow third-party vendors to sell download codes for PlayStation games. This comes in the wake of a huge PS5 remake, according to a new lawsuit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the publisher has been behaving as if it had a complete monopoly on the digital gaming market for years.
If players are unable to charge for games on the PlayStation Store what they want, they are forced to pay or find physical games elsewhere. The new class action claims that people often pay $175 or more for downloadable games from the same hard drive. Since the introduction of the PS5 last year, Sony has faced class actions against its DualSense controllers. Sony’s PS 5 console was released in November, and it is now the subject of a new lawsuit.
According to a new report from Bloomberg, Sony and PS5 scalpers could make more money with the PlayStation 5 than they have in a long time. The scalper has until February 2, 2021, for the very first next launch, and it seems that if they are unable to buy it, they can step in and take the scalp of the group. For the PS 5, the core problem is not the scalp, but Sony’s refusal to be a part of it.
A big part of that, of course, is the fact that Sony doesn’t bundle PS Plus and PlayStation. If you get PS4 games and are a PlayStation subscriber from day one and have no intention of continuing with Sony’s new hardware, you don’t need the PS5. Given the way Microsoft aggressively pushes Xbox Live Games Gold and Xbox One Live Gold together, why does this program not face the same problems it seems to experience every two months? How does Sony view the PlayStation 5 and how does the PlayStation Plus view it?
If you purchase the PlayStation 5 and are a PS Plus subscriber, you can download and install 20 games as long as you are a PlayStation Plus subscriber. The PlayStation plus Collection has made some dramatic changes by removing the monthly time limit for games that are claimed. This raises the question of what Sony might do with selected titles in the future.
