There's no way they'd randomly implement it out of the blue for no reason midway through the generation.  My guess is there will still be certain restrictions placed on a game-by-game basis by the publishers, like certain companies requiring an "online pass" to deter used game sales and similar measures.

It's not about writing anything off 100%. It's about giving assurances. Sony publically stated that they won't have the kind of DRM envisioned by MS on PS4. They'll be held to that.
Apparently MS doen't want to be held to their sudden reversal.

This was a totally different situation back then. 32x was released and a disaster. Saturn was released, was better than 32x and more successful but didn't have a chance against psx. Xbone isn't released yet and many people say "MS, that was the right decision". I don't see that much damage. Of course forums will keep the topic for the next years so they can still use it to tell us how anti-consumer M$ is but this doesn't change the fact they changed their mind.

Oh man, don't put such faith in Sony like they're saints. We have no idea what has happened behind closed doors and what has been considered.

So you chosse to believe Sony and not MS, obviously. Give MS a little time to deal with it themselves. To me they had an innovative way to gamers but the loud crowd destroyed their ideas. I liked the share-feature a lot, others didn't so they changed it.

For one Sony couldn't match Microsoft digital only offering even if they wanted to. They would need billions of dollars of extra server infrastructure which they don't currently have. They could pay Microsoft or Google to do it of them I guess... They will grow their digital footprint as the consumers demand it.

But that wans't even on the table for them behind closed doors at the moment. :)

I don't trust any corporation. Sony said they never intended to have DRM on PS4 in the first place, and they publically stated there won't be any. They put themselves in a position where they can't introduce a DRM-system akin to Microsoft's on PS4.

Microsoft just left the backdoor open to try again once people are locked in.

All digital purchases for PS4 will have online activation and DRM.

All disc based purchases on PS4 will disc based DRM that you can resell with the disk to the next user.

Everything has one form of DRM or another dude. Microsoft just wanted internet to do it for everything where now you where now you have to swap disks to do it for retail.

I'm talking about the DRM thing, doesn't seem to me Sony would need to invest billions to implement the same strategy as MS.

@ Damnyouall - If there is one thing I've learnt its that it doesn't matter what these companies say it doesn't 'prevent' them from anything. It's not like they made a vocal contract with it's fans when they said that.

You're putting too much stock into what they're saying, which wouldn't actually affect what they wanted to do, if they chose to.

DRM is up to the publisher, Sony said. So it doesn't make a difference. But keep your agenda of showing us how bad MS still is and Sony isn't.