Fri, Mar 05, 2010 | 09:05 GMT
Sony patent shows degradable demos
Sony’s registered a patent for something known as degradeable demos.
It details how a taster could be the full game itself, with features and levels disappearing over time or depending how far you’ve got along with play.
A couple of examples given by SCEA, who registered the patent, shows how strong a weapon can be, before degrading over time to a weaker weapon.
Another one shows race tracks being removed one-by-one, depending on the progress made in the demo. Once you the full game, however, you can gain back whatever features that degraded in the taster.
Thanks, Siliconera.
7 
Posted in: PS3, Sony
Tags: Degradeable demos, scea
7 comments
#1
scuz
05/03/10, 9:13 am
this is sort of like the copyright protection on ARMA, lookitup
#2
mington
05/03/10, 9:27 am
so i guess this is how the ‘play an hour’ of all games demo thingy is gonna work
#3
Eregol
05/03/10, 9:49 am
So, you’d get the whole game, but bits get taken away the longer you have it?
A good idea in principle. But there’d always be a hacker who manages to get the entirity of the content off the demo for free.
#4
Aimless
05/03/10, 9:54 am
They could just have expiration handled server-side, requiring the user to be connected to PSN in order to play the preview version at all.
#5
Arnysyas
05/03/10, 11:19 am
I think it’s will be something special to the “premium” PSN users it was mentioned in the survey . something about one hour play of any PSN title !!!
#6
cookiejar
05/03/10, 11:28 am
Yeah, Sony really do need to get their act together on the whole trial game thing for PSN titles.
I guess this could be it.
#7
bugmenot
05/03/10, 12:32 pm
its a great idea for stuff like online multiplayer. let you try all of the maps from the start then gradually remove maps as the demo expires. No worse than fixed expiry betas like the recent battlefield 2 beta where you play the same map over and over and get bored.