PlayStation had "no intention" of messing with pre-owned – and no pressure from publishers, either

PlayStation boss Andrew House saysthere was never any plan for PS4 to block second-hand games – and publishers weren’t asking for it either.

Although Sony reputedly ‘won’ E3 after declaring it won’t introduce measures to curtail the use of second hand games on its system, the confirmation during its E3 press event was merely a continuation of strategy.

Speaking the The Guardian, House says that Sony only chose to make the statements as it saw speculation rise about both its own plans and the fury around Microsoft.

He said: "There’s an interesting backstory on that. I guess, dating from about our February event, there had been questions about what our online policy would be. And I have to say that we were slightly perplexed, because we had no intention of changing from a model that I think has served us really well for several platform life-cycles.

"And then, of course, it was really the actions of others, and the reaction coming from consumers, which led to more speculation.

"So we felt that with E3, and Monday night’s press conference, it was a really good opportunity to set the record straight.

"But there weren’t any changes that we’d been considering."

Before and during E3, rival format Xbox One and its execs had insisted that a new model for games ownership – that would assign licence rights to gamertags instead of disc – was the way forward, and that it allowed publishers to monetise the trade-in market.

But third-party publishers, House added, had been lobbying PlayStation at least for such features.

"We didn’t feel any sense that we needed to respond to any external pressure."

In fact, despite appreciating the ire second hand sales raise amongst some content creators, House said he appreciates the value consumers place on both their games collections and the chance to trade-in their titles for new ones:

""I think there’s a very careful balance to strike. We’re a game publisher ourselves, so there’s a certain argument for us that there should be something of a model for content-creators to participate in second sales. Having said that, however, the consumer sees ownership as a very key benefit when purchasing a physical product. And the flipside of the argument is that retailers will tell you that the vast majority of trade-in value gets immediately repurposed into new purchases of games, and those people in turn generate word of mouth and create more interest."

PS4 launches in the UK at the end of the year, priced 349.99.