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Games cost a lot of time and money to make, but what they are actually selling you is an experience. Just like a movie.
Because they are selling an experience, there is an inherent value in having that experience early; being able to talk about that experience while it is still fresh with others, like a movie.
Now, a movie, unlike a game, has 3 points of audience.
It has the cinema showing - the closest equivalent to this would be a demo or a beta for a game. A finite chance to have that experience in a manner that is presented to you, but that you do not have much control over. Some people like a movie so much, they will see it multiple times at the theatre, paying for the experiencde each time, in the same way that some people will enjoy a demo so much they will play it over and over, despite the experience not usually radically changing or expanding beyond the initial experience.
Films second point of audience is the rental market. This is a much more user controlled experience; they can rewatch scenes, set up their viewing how they want, and they can treat it as though they own it, but for a finite amount of time.
A single rental copy will pass through many peoples hands, which is why stores that rent movies pay a far higher price for each copy than the cost of the later 'sell to consumer' price point; because for many people, they finite time they have to own the experience is enough for them.
The third point of audience is the purchase stage. This is the user having whatever experience they want, for as long as they want. They are also free to sell that experience on to someone else, because by the time this stage has occurred, the majority of the audience has already had opportunity to enjoy the experience at either of the first two stages, and the producers of the experience have already made the majority of their revenue - this is the long tail of revenue for their product.
The important difference here is that games actually have one point of audience. People will treat this audience point under any combination of the above three audience points; some people will treat it as a 'cinema showing', go through the single play campaign under the time limit they have set themselves, and then trade it back in to pick up soemthing else.
Some people will treat it as a rental, blaze through the singleplayer, do a bit of multiplayer for a week, then trade it back in.
Some people will treat it as a purchase, and keep it and play at their leisure over a much longer period.
The problem is, the people treating a game as either of the first two audience points are diminsihing overall sales, because each new copy will pass through multiple peoples hands, but the game shops who push for the used market pay no more for a copy that they treat like that than they do for a copy they are intending to 'sell' as with the third audience point example.
So the shop will make multiple revenues on a single copy, where the creators of that product only make one revenue, and every revenue after the first prevents an additional 'as new' sale.
This is the exact reason why movie rental 'first copies' are extremely expensive to purchase; so that the rental store and the publisher can both see some of that repeat revenue in a fairer manner (a new release rental DVD will cost over $100 for the rental store to purchase, with the expectancy that each rental DVD is rented to at least 10 people).
So this is why publishers are initiating things like project ten dollar; because their point of sale is the only way they can make revenue, and the used market might as well be called the 'stealth rental' market, because the retailer gets all of the revenue from multiple sales of a single copy of a product, the 'rinse and repeat' consumers get to - effectively - rent new titles, but the publisher (and the developers) don't see any revenues beyond that first sale.
...are you actually attempting to argue the degradation of a disk containing data (which is not in fact the thing you have purchased) is equivalent to the mechnical wear and tear of a car?
