I have one objection against the idea that the publishers know what they are doing, and that is that the publishers only have their own interest at heart. We don't know that we are actually better off with having a publisher in the first place, but you can assume that publishers are not interested in any scenario where they aren't the biggest beneficiary, one way or the other.
In Europe, when they do, most people resell their games directly to one another using E-bay like services. Retail is dying, and digital distribution is taking over. You would think promoting digital distribution was in their interest, but for whatever reason I have yet to see a digital version that is cheaper than the retail version (it is typically the reverse).
Now either they think that retail is important for them and should stick around, or not, but what we are seeing now is just really weird. I think the fact that they are looking for ways to make money off-of second hand sales probably does mean that they feel that at least in the U.S., there is a lot of money being made there, though I have seen very conflicting reports, the only somewhat independent one seemed to show hardly any impact of reselling games. But Microsoft being at the forefront of this discussion currently at least fits with their dominance in the U.S., and the most logical point of contact for (also primarily U.S.) publishers.
Personally I think that the AAA gaming model is broken. I think comments about there being increasingly little room for AA games is false. Games need to diversify their size and marketshare massively. And I am all for a more open iOS style distribution platform where developers can publish more directly, without additional publishers being involved. It is in the interest of publishers to have a small amount of big projects that they can add value to by employing all their marketing, distribution channels and what not, and in fact, digital distribution is as much a danger to them as anything else. They may be the last to want to have retail being cut out in that respect, because it makes cutting out publishers altogether much easier, and makes the role of platform holders much more important (which also has downsides, but let's not get into that now).
The pay model will either have to involve very low pricing, where the prices are so low that the end-user doesn't care about not being able to resell, or they have to be high enough where the end-user needs to be able to get some value from reselling. In that latter situation, digital reselling would need to be supported by the platform, and in this case it would be relatively easy for the developer and publisher to receive secondary royalties, or set limitations on how soon you can resell the product (similar to how prices go down over time in other situations). Irrespective of whether that should be legal, I could see of a way in which that would become an acceptable solution for all.
I think it is definitely the case though that what option is chosen by the platform holders in the way they provide an interface that balances the interest of publishers, retailers and consumers will be an on-going balancing act, and it is certainly the case that the future of a platform (and publisher, retailer, etc.) can be made or broken by the right or wrong decisions. So I predict it will be fairly exciting to see how this pans out.
In the meantime though, we'll still enjoy our games.
So if anyone in your family can play a game you own on an XBO, does that also imply they can play the SAME game at the same time? So to play Halo 5 multiplayer against my kids I wouldn't need to buy multiple copies of the game?
