PlayStation Mobile Shackles Sony To Gaming Past

In the announcement for the PlayStation Mobile store and environment released this week by Sony is a clause that's rather tiny and is disguised as a perk: three devices allowed for each game. In the past, back before the smartphone, this sort of note would have been amazing – you mean I can play this game on my PlayStation at home as well as at my cousin Joe's house? Amazing! Now here in the present, three devices is a limit that Sony shouldn't be working with.

As the gaming universe very, very reluctantly starts making its way into the mobile environment, limits in play continue to appear here and there. A feature for the PlayStation Vita is cross-compatibility with some games between it and the PlayStation 3. Cross-compatibility for a game between smartphones and tablets should, by all means, be a given by now. With the PlayStation Mobile environment, you can play a game you purchase on three devices and that's it – once you've played the game on your tablet and your smartphone, you get one more choice.

For a lot of people, this isn't a problem. If you've got a smartphone and a tablet, you're probably going to have those devices for some time to come. If you purchase a smartphone, you're likely nailed in to a 2-year contract with your mobile carrier, and a tablet isn't something you buy more than once a year – if that. What the PlayStation Mobile rule of 3 does not account for is the ever-growing multi-device-owning public.

I should not be counted as I've got more devices in and out of my hands than most people will ever touch as a product reviewer – but given the current release schedule for products at less than a year between one device and its upgraded version (see: HTC One X+), it's not out of line to assume people are switching devices much more often than the 2-year lock implies. It must be then that Sony wants to work in the old world, one where the idea of piracy being so important that they limit the devices on which a game can be played for the legitimate multi-device-owning public.

And that's your first-world problem opinion for the day. Do you own more than three devices that you'd like to play the same game on? Let us know!