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PlayStation 3 owners are considered lucky when compared to Xbox 360 owners since they don't have to worry about the looming specter of RRoD looming over their shoulders every time they turn on their console. But the PS3 isn't some magical device and even its hardware can and will eventually fail. That 'eventuality' happened to me a bit sooner than I was expecting with my launch 60 GB PS3 dying over the weekend, with no amount of love (or towels) being able to coax it back to life.
While annoyed, I wasn't entirely crushed since I happened to have a second PS3 (a 40 GB unit) hooked up to another TV that I could swap out with my 'main' PS3. So I start to go through the process of redownloading all the games and DLC that I'd grabbed over the last two years, a slow and annoying process -- but I told myself that at least I didn't lose anything I couldn't get back. I was able to redownload every single game I had bought from the PSN, and I was able to redownload every single song that I had gotten for Rock Band (read: a ton) without a hitch. But then I fired up SingStar... and everything ground to a halt.
You see, SingStar takes an interesting view on DRM. Sure you can download from a wide selection of decent music at reasonable prices, but things get trickier when you need to redownload them -- you can't. SingStar uses its own download system outside of the standard PSN system, and it won't allow you to download a SingStar song to more than one PS3. So even though Sony allows you to download almost ANY of their PSN content onto 5 PS3s and that Activision and EA have no problems allowing you to do the same with their music tracks, SingStar has instead decided to impose an incredibly Draconian form of DRM that permanently keeps you from redownloading content you've paid for if your console dies. And worst still, they won't even let you re-buy it! So if you download a SingStar song and your PS3 has something unfortunate happen to it, you can never get that song again. Period.
SingStar's DRM is by far and away the most controlling system from a videogame company in this day and age, even outstripping the berserk Spore DRM system (which is hard to do). To permanently lock a player out of content that they've paid for is a shameful business practice. At the very least they could allow you to rebuy the content -- I mean why not? It would just make them more money and would allow their customers to sing their favorite songs. I mean wasn't that the POINT of the SingStore? While the idea of rebuying content you've already paid for once sounds painful, at least the option would have been appreciated.  An example of A GOOD storeI imagine Sony's excuse will be that the record companies have demanded the limitations, but that seems suspect in the days of Guitar Hero IV and Rock Band 2. Both games have downloadable master tracks available, both games let you sing, and in GH IV's case, even play as the likeness of some of the musicians themselves. So you're telling me that EA and Activision can convince the record companies to relax their control, but Sony -- one of the biggest media companies in the world, can't? Unfortunately without an official Sony response, it's hard to truly judge their reasoning behind the SingStore limitations. Maybe it was something they just hadn't thought about, or maybe the fact that they're also a record company means that they're less willing to push for more relaxed DRM standards. Whatever the reason is though, it seems unlikely that Sony will change their *ahem* tune on this one, which is a real shame -- I sure would like to sing 'Eye of the Tiger' just one more time... |
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