We thought Sony was out of the woods on this one. We really did. After months of frequent rumors and a patent filing pointing to the possibility of used game-blocking technology on the PlayStation 4, Sony's head of worldwide studios Sheuhei Yoshida seemed to finally put the matter to rest by telling interviewers that used games would be playable on the system.

Now, new statements from another Sony executive have thrown Yoshida's supposed assurances into question. When NowGamer asked PlayStation UK Managing Director Fergal Gara to confirm reports of Yoshida's earlier "used games are OK" statements, his answer was a bit less than reassuring for potential PS4 buyers.

"Well, first of all, we haven't stated that second-hand games... we haven’t made a statement on the second-hand games question," Gara said. "The answer to the pre-owned question isn’t clarified just yet and we’re working through that and we’ll announce our position in more detail as and when we can."

It's very possible that this is just a case of one arm of Sony not knowing what the other is doing, of course. Gara may not have been fully informed about Yoshida's public statements and Sony Japan's position when he did his interview. It's also possible he was aware of Yoshida's loose lips and was working to walk back Sony's public position to a more neutral territory in order to temporarily appease publishers or lure Microsoft into revealing its used game plans.

But it's also somewhat possible that Gara's non-denial means there's more to Sony's position than it seems. When the story first broke last week, Yoshida was quoted as saying "used games can play on PS4," which is not quite the same as saying "every PS4 will play every used game disc without restriction" or something similar. When Ars' Casey Johnston sat down at a roundtable session with Yoshida the next day, he said that "when you purchase the disc-based games for PS4, that should work on any hardware." This seems like an even stronger statement of used game support, but it still leaves a bit of wiggle room. (Does that mean purchasing used games specifically? Also, note the "should" language).

More distressingly, when asked about online registration for used games, Yoshida said that the decision was up to individual publishers, and that Sony is "not talking about that plan" for its own first-party games.

Our best reading of the situation as it stands now, based on the crumbs we've received on the matter, is that the PlayStation 4 almost definitely won't have a system in place that forces used games to be unplayable past the first owner. That said, it's not clear that Sony will actively get in the way if publishers (including, perhaps, Sony itself in some cases) want to prevent resale with some kind of online registration check or force pre-owned players to pay an "unlock fee" of some sort.

We're still trying hard not to read too much into Sony's lack of clarity on this matter, and we hope that all this speculation will seem silly by the time the PS4 comes out. That said, it seems that Sony, and potential PS4 owners, aren't actually out of the woods yet.