Will the Xbox 720 Lead the Charge for Anti-Used Game Systems?

By Karla Robinson
January 30, 2012

Microsoft and other gaming manufacturers are reportedly considering incorporating an anti-used game system into their new consoles.
Gamers expect to be able to buy cheaper used games and sell back their new games, but Wired notes, “the death of used games is inevitable.”
“But the success of digital-only, one-owner games on PC, phones, tablets and social networks must surely be helping to change consumers’ attitudes about what a game system is ‘supposed’ to do. So as soon as Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo et al. think they can get away with it, the disc or cartridge will simply disappear, replaced entirely by digital game sales,” explains the article.
“What we are possibly looking at now is an interim period in which the disc as a delivery method is still around but it becomes more like a PC game, which are sold with one-time-use keys that grant one owner a license to play the game on his machine.”
This doesn’t necessarily mean that used games will disappear; it’s possible that vendors like GameStop will pay sellers less for used games and use that money to buy new codes from the publisher for each used game it sells.
Also, the articles notes that discs will still exist to store a library of games, “but it can fill that role while still being only tied to one owner.”

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