Used Games

Xbox One is planning on charging you extra for playing used games. It may be similar to how EA charged users for a one-time user-specific code that came free with Battlefield 3, but any subsequent user had to pay to play online, which is the entire point of the game. People are calling it a "tax," and now gaming publishers are chiming in saying they want their cut of the "tax" There's no word on how this "tax" is being distributed, but one assume that Xbox keeps it. They've found a way to become Gamestop, which makes its money on selling, buying, and re-selling the same games over and over again, only now the person being charged extra never has to leave the house to be be shafted.

The gaming industry is as terrified of resale as they are of piracy. My question is: why? Most games now come with bonus paid downloadable content that when tallied together can cost more than the game itself. Most of this content seems like it was willingly withheld from the game at release. The entire structure of paid content and the way it was distributed was conceived as a way to keep people loyal to the games they owned so they wouldn't try and sell them off for at least a year. That's not going to stop if the resale industry dries up because it's too lucrative.If resale ends, however, people are going to rethink shelling out $60 on release dates in case they wind up with a lemon they literally can't pawn off.