When launching a new console, manufacturers must do their very best to court publishers. Do publishers want the used games market to die? Oh yeah.

I believe this is definitely the end for used games. If you're still buying discs in a store, they'll be just like iTunes "digital copies"-- the disc may contain the game files, but it's useless without the included, one-use code that links to your online account. Poof. No used game market.

Considering game prices haven't changed in my entire 30+ year lifespan, while costs have grown enormously, I wouldn't say this is about greed so much as survival. (In fact, prices have gone down considering inflation.) The other option, I think, is $100 games. That's a no-go.

I HATE the idea of games locked to some stupid account on a service that may not exist in ten years. It basically means the thing I paid for isn't mine, and it makes me want to walk away from gaming. But there isn't some other way for things to go. This is the end for used games. Get used to it.

Boring. Games have been the same price since the NES days despite enormous budget increases. Developers are doing this because they're afraid of going bankrupt, not for some movie villain power trip.

OK Gamespot, let's be clear: all these companies will offer a successor. As you're aware, the guy who made this prediction does not have any connections to the Big Three. Even if he was somehow right, there's no reason for anyone to announce that they're calling it quits when they're knee deep in the most profitable portion of the console generation. It would be bad publicity. The only real hubbub I might have expected would have been a Wii U delay for retooling.

What the article doesn't talk about is the golden ticket of cloud gaming-- near-bulletproof DRM. When cloud gaming becomes mainstream enough, and it will, home hardware won't even exist at a reasonable price point to play local copies of games. The problem of piracy will then be passed on to the gamer, who will have to worry about more account hacking and credit card fraud.

Glad to hear this. OnLive is amazing tech (Arkam Asylum looking sweet... on a netbook that struggles with YouTube!) that deserves more support in general.

Tom, at what hour or in what state were you when you wrote this article? Is this just an attention grab? Microsoft makes money with Windows, and it won't matter what you run on it. Apple makes money with Macs/ iPads/ iPhones, and it won't matter if you jailbreak it. But game consoles LOSE money on console sales, so it clearly matters if no one buys games. Take that uniqueness away, and you've got... a PC. The world already has those, Tom. Last I checked poor little Billy Budge or George Hotz can make miracles happen on a PC all day long. But if [...poorly thought-out] articles like yours become the majority opinion, the future of console gaming will be warmed-over tech like Nintendo Wii and paranoid DRM boxes like OnLive.