First, let me explain what the crap is a Newspaper paywall.
Basically, the news corp wanted you to pay to access their website. A good example is New York Times website.
Now, if you try to google "NYT paywall", you'd get a how-to-hack on the first hit instead of the actual NYT site.
When news is free online, they think they can charge people for it.
Now, we are getting online passes for games. The similarity is few since it's not as bad as the news paywall.
We are seeing a shift in games becoming free to play and then pay for premium items or high level access such as WoW that lets you play until lvl20 completely free.
More and more MMO and numerous other fps, you can play for free. If people are cash strapped and rely on used games, the online pass would only push them more toward the free games.
We also know that the used games market influence the early adopter to a certain degrees. In that, they will shell out the full price to play the game day 1 but still can sell back the game and use that for the next new game. This online pass devalue the resell value.
On the grand scheme of things. I see it as the publisher cabalizing their own sales in the long run when people catches on with this new fangled Online Pass.
