DRM News

As made clear by their recent filing for a patent for ‘Feature eroding video game demonstration software’, Sony Computer Entertainment (the gaming division of the Sony corporation) has a new model in mind for game demos.

Gamasutra reports in detail how the system would work. The demo would consist of a large portion of the game, if not the entire game itself. However, play time or options would be limited, and the limits would become stricter the longer (or more times) the demo is played. A purchase would unlock the full game from the eroding demo, much as PC shareware used to function.

Echoing the shareware business model, popular in the PC market in the 1990s, such a system would allow a player to "unlock" the game by paying the purchase price over the internet, restoring the game to full functionality and effectively transforming the demo into a standard copy. Such a game could be transferred either digitally or on a disc.

"It may be desirable to implement demonstration versions of video games in a manner that more fully promotes the features or characteristics of the game while still providing protections that will induce gamers to purchase the right to use the video game," the patent explains.

An interesting model, and one that would seem to work well.