His is a fairly well informed opinion though. If a gamer doesn't buy new now, what makes you think they'll suddenly be able to afford new games later? They're more likely to turn to piracy as an even cheaper alternative.

The used game market allows those from middle income households to trade in games and make more new purchases in the long run. Studies also show that most impulse buys tend to be for used games as it reduces the risk, but this also improves exposure to franchises and gaming brands. Effectively, each used game customer is a publishers future customer.

Hmmm... does the ban only affect the console or the entire account?

I got a second-hand 360 that turned out to be chipped. I got banned from Live on my console but my account seems to work still (at least for GFWL and AoE: Online).

My guess is account bans for normal offences, but console AND account ban for chipping/modding.

I agree with this as long as the reason your getting banned is a serious offence such as hacking, cheating or using pirated games.

People are sort of over-reacting, but yeah this isn't good news.

That's not surprising, but to be honest you shouldn't lose access to your physical single player games. I probably won't ever get banned from anywhere but this is a bit harsh. What a waste of money.

I have a feeling Microsoft is tired of the little racist/ sexist kids that ruined their reputation on XBL , so they're sending them to PS4

Bullshit

This is pretty much the same thing that happened with Origin a year ago.  You'd think Microsoft would have learned from that.  Origin originally required you to be online and if you were banned you lost access to all your games.  They eventually added an offline mode due to the outcry, and you can still access your single player games when banned.  They even seem to have copied the same sort of blanket bans where people were getting locked out of their Origin account for posts on the Bioware forums.  Now Microsoft is apparently throwing out xbox live bans for what you upload to skydrive.

As for steam, I am fairly sure VAC bans are game specific (though I believe old source games are grouped together).  Even then they are only for VAC enabled servers.  If you somehow manage to get your entire steam account banned, I believe it is the same as origin where you can still access games in offline mode.

This analogy only works if the only thing Microsoft keeps is the money you spent on Gold.  They don't take your golf clubs if you get kicked out.

Nvm I think I figured it out, it would be like the 360, the console won't be banned so you can just creat a new account and continue using the same console, but it does suck that you will lose your purchased content with the account ban. That should be considered stealing from users. MS have to leave the games available to you offline after the ban, they have to, other wise they won't stand a chance if somebody sues. Ban them from multiplayer but not from their purchased content :/ 

no problem with the ban, but the content belongs to the user digital or otherwise.

That's like apple banning you from iTunes and not allowing you to listen to your music that is stored locally on the device after the ban, so is the console considered a license also?