I'll say this... if there's a used game lockout and publishers insist on the same price point on all their games, you can say hello to Madden and Call of Duty being the only games to survive. No one will buy Ace Combat 8 or The Black College Football Experience 2013 for $60.

There's no way there's going to be a used game lockout. As much as I hate them, Gamestop has way too much clout to ever let that happen.

Yeah, I don't see this used game thing happening either. If by some chance it does, I would strongly consider not getting it. I tend buy games, beat them quickly and sell them back for top dollar. I'm not giving that idea yet.

Look at the DLC strategy of publishers now. They're already battling the used market by attempting to extend the content at key points. Dead Space 3 came out yesterday alongside a DLC announcement. Season Passes abound.

Digital distribution is the key to combating the used market, but in order to do that, you have to incentivize the consumer with cheaper prices. This MSRP shit is for the birds. Look to Steam, console developers!

the only thing that would really get me into a system that had a no used policy, is lower prices on games. figure $40 per new game would be just about right.

http://www.edge-online.com/features/...playstation-4/

If our sources are correct (and we’re confident they are), Microsoft has made the move that publishers and developers have been asking for. Microsoft’s next Xbox will do what Steam and the App Store have been doing for years, and very successfully, too – a download-first, one profile, one purchase, one storefront system. Overnight, it’ll stop GameStop and GAME from selling on games without a penny heading back to its publisher, let alone its creator.

Hopefully it allows for me to play games offline once they are purchased. Similar to how Steam works it.

If MS has really decided to cut out the used game market, they can go f*&k themselves. The "always on", d/l shit works with apps because they're cheap. I'll be damned if I fork over $60 for a new game I never recoup costs on when it bores me or - worse yet - sucks. As another poster mentioned earlier, the only games to get a "new" purchase will be CoD and Madden... the rest will rot until they're "affordable".
Oh, and if MS does this, I can see their console failing - miserably.

They'll have to allow retailers to sell codes then too, right? It would be fantastic if they merged the "storefront" across platforms so that every XBox 720/Horizon game could be played on an appropriate GFWL hardware PC.

And if they are selling codes at retail, they'll just be QR codes that the Kinect reads in. So it's not so bad.

Agreed. In fact, if other companies follow suit...a video game market crash is coming, guaranteed. Sad, really. I wonder though, a lot of us here are pretty poed at MS if they make this move. But are we the norm? We are passionate, hardcore gamers, most of us. The average consumer is a pansy pos who might just roll over and accept this. That's what I'm afraid of.

Maybe, what I said a while back about just enjoying my old stuff is going to finally come true. They can't take those away from me, so I might as well enjoy them and stop worrying about what's next.

I don't think Microsoft could survive it, unless PS4 did it as well. (well, unless doing it allowed them to get exclusives like Madden or something)

It can work, but it'll force lower prices from the publishers on first-run games.

For this to work, they need to look to Steam...not only as a model for digital distribution, but for their deep sales pricing. No more of this "10% off" shit.

Agreed.

And also agree that I wouldn't mind this if there were more sales like Steam. I'm used to not being able to resell games on the PC, so it's not a big deal to me.

That won't just "stop" GS, but it'll put the out of business. They make almost no money on new games, and almost 90% of their revenue comes from used games. It'll take a few years, but if they can't sell used games that are relatively new releases, they WILL go out of business. And I doubt they'll let that happen.

The only way either company does it is if they both do it. If Microsoft killed used games and Sony didn't? Sony wins, easily.

I won't believe that Microsoft is so stupid until they announce it officially. If they do, my plans will instantly change from buying a 720 on day one and waiting a year or two on the PS4 and Wii U to buying a Wii U that day and picking up PS4 within 6 months of its launch.

It's mutually beneficial for them to collude on this.

What if they offered an incentive to buy things digitally versus retail? Publishers undercut the used purchases that way by bringing the value of used games down (both on the resale and repurchase side) while still getting a cut of more sales? Logically there's no justification for a GoD version to be MSRP anyway. Just offer it at 33% off at release AND allow pre-orders and pre-loads so it's ready at midnight on release day. Like, oh what's that service called...?

Honestly, if Steam does come out with a Steam Box, it could instantly put both PS4 and the 720 on death watch. Neither system has enough exclusives to carry them anymore and really if Steam came out with an affordable console that could play all the games they sell, there really wouldn't be much reason to buy anything else.

That said, I just don't believe that either the 720 or PS4 will exclude used games. It just doesn't seem to make any sense to come out with a system that is that much of a deviation from the past and too many companies that sell Xboxes rely on used game sales. I think the negatives far outweigh the positives from a financial position for Microsoft.

Yeah, but then you hit a version the prisoner's dilemma. If I'm Microsoft and not brain dead, I realize that if Sony does include anti-used tech and I don't, I have a huge advantage. I also realize that if Sony doesn't include anti-tech and I do, I have a huge disadvantage. Whatever the other side does, I'm better off not including it. Really, my primary goal should probably be to make them think I'm going to include it, then not follow through, which may account for the various 'leaks' we've had from both sides.

Again, if they're hoping to sell as many systems as possible, it's in their best interest to make the unit appealing to the most consumers. Sure they might miss out on sales of Halo 5 or Gears 4, but it's worth it if they have a huge gamer install base. Who cares what the third-party publishers are begging for? It's not like they're going to boycott Microsoft if their unit is capable of playing used games.

I do not want to be downloading 25gb or bigger game files on a regular basis.

^^ Yeah, there's that too!