@cozmic80 you are right about greed part of problem as well , because the contracts the developers have to sign with publisher are not as fair as they should be. but the problem with comparing game sales to cars or houses is the difference between physical propriety that you own and that right to use somebody else's intellectual propriety. you may own the disc but not the content on it. the reason this makes since, at least from a business prospective is because of larger investment cost for games versus a single house or car.

@masteryoung I used to work at major big box store, I am well aware of the small margins that the retailers get. My point is that as it stands the used game market is not good for game developer/publisher. The royalty system does make some since and that might be what Microsoft is trying to do with their used game fee and they will share that revenue with the developer. The fact about retailers closing is just a fact of life, not just in games but in all retail sales as the market switches to mostly online shopping. This switch well happen ever faster for games because I bet within the next decade physical media will not be how we play games. you have already seen this change on pc platform with services like steam. you cant share your library at all there but it is accepted because pc gaming has been that way for a long time.

The used game market is scam run by companies like GameStop when it comes to new releases. I mean come on $54.99 for a new release and none of that revenue goes to the developer/publisher. The gaming public wonders why so many developers are shutting down recently(THQ,38 studios) This is one of the main reasons. Microsoft is doing the right thing by at least trying to protect the industry and its partners from this huge problem, because I think we all forgot sometimes that is not just Microsoft or Sony that loses money in this, it is everybody that was involved in the project. I do agree that there should be limited sharing of discs allowed between friends, but overall this makes since.

@bluefox755 @greenman123

people have a short memory once there is major system selling game or service they will find a way to deal with it.

The fact of the matter is that as long as it works when it launches( unlike SimCity) and has games and services that are in demand with the public people are going to buy it.

We deal with this kind of pricing modal with cellphones all the time, why not for consoles, this will allow for a bigger possible install base then there would be if all they did was release the $500 SKU.