if publishers can't make decent profit with pre-order bonuses, multiple paid DLC, Limited/Collectors Editions, Online passes and a good percentage of sales being digital that can't be sold (20% I remember was stated for PSN, 35% on some 3ds/vita games), ports and sequels that probably use a lot of assets from previous iterations which can lower the budget of their sequels, then it's better off they close down.

Level 5 stated that if Ni no Kuni(a new original open world IP which uses Studio Gibhli animation) manages to sell over a million that they would consider making a sequel. On the other hand a game like dead space 3 which has assets, engine , character models/animations, sound effects from 2 previous games that can (are) be used needs 5 million sales for EA to consider making a sequel.

An open world game like The Witcher 2 which has great graphics/story/gameplay(subjective) on pc sold well enough for Project Red to make a sequel on next gen consoles/PC (Or even Witcher 1 which was only on PC) .A semi linear game like Tomb raider failed to meet expectations with over 3 million sold in first month or so.
Companies like Namco Bandai have been making profit year after year, yet a lot of their games release japan only and have sales range from 100K to 2-3 million. i remember reading an article about Falcom that said they haven't made a loss on games in over 10 years(look it up)
Capcom was very pleased with Dragon Dogma sales even though it's only 2million+. They re-released the game again with the expansion and it sold well again.
The only problem I see is that big publishers realized games can make them billions of dollars (GTA, COD, Skyrim , 1st party games), so they stopped caring about B-tier level games and started spending ridiculous budgets on Marketing their games to chase the money.
And frankly not allowing used game sales is just sad and idiotic. Both Sony and Nintendo have stated that their digital sales are increasing a lot(20%-30% on some games). With more time and putting incentives on digital counterparts of games(free dlc, cheaper initial price,play as you download, earlier release digital) these percentages will rise naturally without garbage policies.

Well then, you are restricting your potential userbase to people with plenty of money. It's not going to affect you, but it will affect many people.

The issue with the old games though is that the original xbox service went down.....you can't use it now. When xbones service goes down if you buy games past it's service line (and even games you bought originally) you're not gonna be able to play.

lets look at it like this.....say 360 had the same service xbone will have. Than 2 years after xbone is released, 360 is no longer supported. Unless they completly remove those restrictions from the console before hand.....than you're not gonna be able to use your games at all or register new games under your account. It would render your 360 useless.

So you think they did all that block used game stuff to let people share their games for free on any console and resulting in lower sales?? Familly members will most likely mean accounts on the same consoles or users using the same ip address if you have multiple consoles in your home. Just like you can borrow your halo 4 copy to your brother to play on is 360 in his room when you are done playing it in yours, and only two people can play the same game at the same time because they want to get rid with split screen all together next gen.

He will buy used. Not sure about NA but EU has already discussed this issue. And What about people who sell used games to buy new games ?

"Europe's highest court ruled on Tuesday that the trading of "used" software licenses is legal and that the author of such software cannot oppose any resale.

The exclusive right of distribution of a copy of a computer program covered by such a licence is exhausted on its first sale, said the European Court of Justice (ECJ). This applies to downloaded software as well as that bought on CD or DVD. This ruling sets a precedent for trading of used software licenses throughout the European Union and could potentially impact ebooks and computer games as well."

When willit be applied however is a different story.

Tell me about it, peasants who dream on gaming on a budget ! Laughable.

That is a definite cause for concern. If MS, or any other company, ended up neglecting an issue like this, I'm sure there would be a huge uprising. Hopefully they're smart of enough to realize this and have already thought up a contigency plan.

Reality check:

The industry is removing about every single blasted safeguard it has to prevent it from being killed by used games and crashing like it did int he 1980s (well based on what Microsoft had done):

* No game rentals.  

* Wanting to prevent used game sales.

* Review embargos until AFTER the game is released.

* Pushing everyone to preorder and buy before they played the game.

Only thing left now is really demos of games.  But if you pull an Aliens Colonial Marines thing, then you see demos lying.  There is also supposedly quality controls in plce by publishers and licensing, so it isn't a free for all.  But, really?

Nah, I don´t think so.People (in this case, gamers) in general are passive.