All they had to do was to give consumers real incentives and value with going digital. That's all. Give them enough to counter-balance the subsidizing effect of trading in physical discs and they would have been set. It would have been seen as not only fair, but as a natural progression. The convoluted system designed to give GameStop and other big retailers a cut, however, isn't something that's going to appeal to customers.
As long as console manufacturers cater to big retailers by refusing to make digital the better value that it SHOULD BE, then it's hard believe that they're truly concerned about developers.
In all honesty, I think the used game system Microsoft wanted to implement would have split the profits between GameStop and the big publishers. From there, publishers might have sent a few pennies down to the original developers, but I wouldn't bet my life on it.
