To address a few arguments here.
First, on the issue of "It's greedy of MS to try to make everyone buy a game new. No other industry does this." Yes, it's "greedy." Or you could say it's good business. MS has the ability to do this. Milton Bradley doesn't, when they sell you a physical copy of Monopoly. Or, for that matter, any entertainment content provider/publisher, when they sell you a physical copy. But don't, for a second, think they WOULDN'T do this if they could figure out a way to give you a physical copy that was only licensed to you. I guarantee you, if Penguin Books could figure out how to "lock" your book to some biometric measure, or to have it erase itself when you try to give it to someone else, they'd do it in a heartbeat. Why? Because of the reasons already mentioned. Every time a used item sale takes place, the original producer loses out on a potential sale of a new item. Oh, and I guarantee you that car manufacturers would do this too, if they could. The only reason they don't is because they can't figure out how. MS has figured out how (for now).
Second, on the issue of "But what about Gamefly and Redbox?!" I expect MS' answer would be "Screw 'em. Not our problem." And they'd be right. This will end Gamefly for MS titles. And maybe PS and Wii titles, if they go a similar route (which I'd bet they'll try to do once they figure out a way to do it).
What we're dealing with in all of this is a clash of interests. It is in MS -- and every content producer's -- interest to force new sales. It is in gamers' interest to NOT have to pay full price for games. It is in retailers' and renters' interests to allow them to continue selling/renting used games. MS has found a way to serve its own interests and the interests of the retailers who are willing to partner with them. The interests of gamers and renters are diametrically opposed to MS' interests, though, so there's no reconciling them.
Most of the arguments against this seem to boil down to "But I don't like it." As a consumer, it's everyone's choice to decide what they like and don't like, and where and how they'll spend their money. But the simple fact is this: saying "I don't like it," even en masse, isn't going to stop MS nor any of the other content producers, from eventually switching to this system. If they have the infrastructure and think the market's there, they'll do it. They're working to condition the market daily, from things like Netflix/Amazon streaming, to Kindle, to Steam, even to MS' current downloadable marketplace on XBL. They're getting customers used to the notion that they don't have unlimited "ownership" of the intellectual property they pay for.
This may mean that MS has to adjust its price points to convince people to buy into the new approach. After all, Apple couldn't sell you a full CD for $15 on iTunes. They had to drop it to a point that the market would bear -- $10 for an album and $0.99 for a song. But the market DID bear that price and iTunes was a success. Other similar enterprises have worked out, like Amazon's digital delivery stuff. Plenty of PC gamers buy digital copies of games now, too. What happens if the distributor of that digital copy stops making the game available for download and you lose your installation? People accept that risk all the time now. Hardcore gamers, even.
It's this apparent acceptance -- sometimes grudgingly, sometimes willingly -- and the strong interests by the content producers to make every dollar possible that leads me to think that they will shift as much as possible to a model that will have as little possible residing on an end-user's system. Streaming is ideal for this, assuming the broadband connection and hardware exists to support it. They've figured out how to do this for Netflix. They'll figure out how to do this for gaming eventually, I suspect. It's just a matter of time.
People will undoubtedly figure out ways around this, too. Some recording device will be created to construct a "virtual environment" for the game so it can be played offline and locally. Or they'll figure out how to create a DVR software program that lets you "rip" Netflix streams. No delivery mechanism is 100% impervious to hacking or piracy. But for the time being at least, streaming offers a LOT more security than physical copies, so I fully expect that content producers will be moving in that direction ASAP, consumer resistance be damned.
We may not like it, but enough people out there will accept it that it will happen.
