Since the majority of posts in this thread are entirely unhelpful: no, it isn't.

Firstly, you have the right to sell any physical copy of something you have bought. This is true of objects far more expensive to manufacture than a single copy of a video game: electronics, cars, private jets, cruise ships, and so on. People don't complain about the App Store because:

a) You have bought a digital product, not a physical one.

b) It cost almost no money to purchase.

Those two things are true, to a lesser extent, for Steam.

Secondly, someone on a tight budget is not going to be willing to spend as much on games if they don't think they will ever get any money out of it afterwards. Consider that you buy a game for $60, thinking that you can resell it for $20, and you will have paid only $40 for the game. At that price point, you will be more willing to buy any given game, and may buy more games in general. Microsoft could, of course, cut out the middleman and just cut the MSRP to $40, but that would require the agreement of retailers and publishers and so on, so it's a more difficult solution. Plus, this way anyone who wants to "spend that extra $20" as such and keep the game gives the full $60 to Microsoft/the devs/the retailer/etc.

Thirdly, you've seen the backlash whenever anyone tries a policy of this sort, and that kind of publicity will not help sales.

All that this thread means is: I love Xbox so much that I can take all kind of things MS impose to me.

People didn't like Steam at first, but now it has probably done the most of anything out there to decrease piracy.  The only people who still pirate are the ones who will never pay for it anyways, and are willing to risk using a crack.

If you don't like the price of admission, don't buy the system, don't play the games, and go build your own DRM free console.  Bitch all you want, but voting with your wallet matters, and I bet nobody will give a shit in a year once these consoles get released because it's all talk no action like the COD boycott that did jack.

We all love this industry, we have supported it for so long that it hurts to see it restrict the very community that made them rich and famous. So forgive me for not understanding why we need to give up some of our basic consumer rights and still be okay with it. Surely there are other avenues that they can do, to increase profit and balance the development cost without sacrificing the gamers in the long run.

Exactly.

I stopped reading when you compared the app store to consoles, digital is not retail. Current gen sold more hardware and software than ever and yet Gamestop reach new highs in profit with used game sales.

It's not for the developers because more often than not, just because you're making the game, doesn't mean you are publishing it. In other words, the publishers will make more money and the Devs won't.

If Microsoft came out and said that games would cost 20 dollars less- around 40 to 50 dollars - no used games would be fine as games would become far more accessible. But instead what we get is full priced games and no way to make money by trading them in.

I never buy used games, but I have traded in a few games to buy new games.

The general consumer isnt asking for better graphics. Look at Nintendo software for the best possible example here. You dont have to be aiming at the uncanny valley, you have to make it visually appealing. It needs to look good enough to immerse the player.

Call of Duty has been using essentially the same game engine now for the last what, 6 Years? The game isnt visually impressive when you put it next to the likes of Crysis 3, Battlefield 3 and Killzone 3... Yet it sells more copies than all 3 of them combined. If developers stopped focusing on making the game look so life like and focused on gameplay and design, maybe... Just maybe, they might start to see the beneifts.

DLC isnt a bad thing, if the DLC itself is actually worth it. Gamers dont complain about DLC like that. They dont complain about CoD map packs and they dont complain about Dragonborn for Skyrim. What they complain about is Day 1 DLC, which simply shouldnt be there, along with on-disc DLC. The Day 1 DLC on ME3 for example was just shitty.

Thats what is so good about indie development. The risks arent there for the developer and its cheap. If you pull it off, you make it big - Look at Notch. Look at the guys at The Behemoth. A problem with indie development too is that a lot of it tends to be "me too" games. Think of the CoD clone example I gave, only apply it to Minecraft and indies. The Indie scene isnt "heaven", its far from it, but at least the Indie scene isnt full of developers fuelled by the ego.