What if the system fails and backfires resulting in less sales? Do publishers blame MS and flock to the PS4(if they don't have any DRM)?
If retailers have to pay MS and publishers a percentage of used game sales chances are they won't offer as much for used games. If retailers don't offer as much for used games, fewer consumers are likely to sell them their old games. If that happens there will be fewer used games on the market and consumers that relied on the money from selling used games to buy new games will buy fewer new games.
Basically, if all the above happens publisher will earn even less money.
get what millions of people are doing already: buy games in a digital marketplace. Make that marketplace good, and enable them to sell their games within it. Developers get a cut, and games top dies a poor death.
From the rumors I've heard of a boy at so my, they're definitely working on this type of stuff--though itsaccount driven and apparently very cumbersome. Maybe they saw MS's plan and scrapped their own, but I doubt it. The vita is very telling about this. Day and date digital downloads, account tied purchases.
My thought for how ms gets around daily activation is having live create multi day tickets when you want to go offline for a while. After that point, live will not authenticate the sale of your cdkey with that game until the expiration of that ticket. Expiration is known at the live DB, users get to stay offline, live is assured that the game cannot be sold. Physical cd is worthless--only a download vector.