Sony rumoured to be thinking of the audience as the enemy today also

This seems to be still in the sphere of unconfirmed rumour, but I have to admit it smells all too plausible: according to Next Generation and Games Radar, Sony is planning to make it illegal to buy and sell used PS3 games. Sources claim that Sony wants to sell them a license to play the game themselves, but not the actual game, so as to prevent them selling it on once they're done playing.

That makes three big-name players in three major media industries - screen, publishing and now gaming - who've recently come out with the more-or-less overt statement that their audience is their enemy.

Now, we know that power is never voluntarily relinquished because we are not entirely ignorant of history. In the digital economy, the economy of the widening gyre, power is relocating from the centre to the edges and it should come as no surprise that those at the centre are willing to fight tooth and nail to stop it.

But the fight that Sony is said to be picking with its audience really isn't helpful to it or the (desperately impoverished) games publishers in whose interests it is claimed to be acting. Extremely elementary economics indicates games will be priced at the intersection of demand and supply, and if Sony attempts to legislate out of existence some part of the value of its games to purchasers by (attemptedly) prohibiting resale, it should be able to command only a commensurately lower price for those games.

Now, that may not be the whole of the story - the market for PS3 games is not a free or open one since there is only one supplier. But if Sony tries to charge full price for games that (theoretically) can't be resold it can only make alternative platforms more attractive. The only way this could really work is if Sony had already sold enough PS3s that the audience was captive, and it has so far sold none.

And of course there is the network effect (Wikipedia) to consider - people select a particular games console because of many factors, including the spec and the software support but also on the basis of the network of other owners with whom they can exchange games. This would be a conspicuously foolish move on so many levels that I will be surprised if it turns out to be true. And yet...as the gyre widens and the falconers panic, this sort of response smells all too plausible.