I was away for the weekend and this thing got 100+ replies lol...  You're again describing day 1 sales, which is what I am saying is part of the problem. 

I personally believe game buying works in tiers. Day 1 tier, amazing reviews tier, word of mount tier, price discount tier... Sure, someone that has a very limited budget may stick to the core group of games they know will deliver the goods when it comes to day 1 purchases.

However people that have money will take more risks with their purcheses. Over time, as price drops and word of mouth spreads, stellar gaming experience will stand out as a good purchase regardless of which tier you belong to. If the product is stellar, publishers can rest assured that people will keep buying new copies of this game as the word of mouth spreads and price cuts happen...since no used coppies will be around cutting in to the sales.

No one wins if the industry keeps making indistinguishable games spanning 4 of the same genres over and over since they know you will justify buying them day 1 and then trade them for 45 bucks when they suck...

Again, why do you think this will be the case when it's been shown time and time againt to NOT be the case with other used markets.

Outside that, I can tell you don't actually buy or look at much used games because you've got the pattern exactly backwords.   As someone who's a fan of niche games I can tell you it generally doesn't work like that.

If you wait to buy an Atlus game or other Niche game... you aren't going to find it.   Not new in the stores, not used at gamestsop.   Chances are you are going to have to buy it via ebay.

The only games hurt by the used market are the indisgingushable games with short 6-7 hour singleplayer campaigns.

The rare games, the unique games... these games are rarely traded in, and damn near impossible to find, even through gamestop.  For example, when I bought my DS I wanted to get Infinite Space.   Nobody was selling it.  Gamestop didn't have it.  Only place to get it?  Online for expensive.

Shin Megami Tensei 4, going to be pretty niche, probably going to have to buy it first day since they won't sell any used copies.   Shin Megami Tensei vs Fire Emblem?   Even more niche, no way you find it used at a gamestop.

I'm talking about first day sales because when it comes to rare, niche and unique games, that's often the only time you can find these games!  They lose their shelf space in stores immediatly so the super popular games and the new games are displayed.

Did it occur to you that AAA games already sell on PSN and 360???  If they areadly sell and they are not making the money as retail why would a publisher risk their buisness.  Why would a publisher throw all their egss into something and risk upsetting their retail agreements.  It doesn't make sense.  If a publisher would do something like that, you would be bitching that they are trying to take away your game ownership.  

There's a reason they don't sell very well at present. How many people are seriously going to opt to pay the same price for a digital copy that they are stuck with forever as a physical copy that they can actually own and sell if they don't like it? Not too fucking many.

The question isn't why would publishers put all their eggs into the digital basket. That's a false choice. The question is, if they want people to buy digitally because used games are so detrimental, why don't they try to make the proposition of buying digitally more appealing?

Used games are a good thing for publishers in a way as well. If I see a title that I might not necessarily enjoy, I can purchase it at a discount prince used. If I like it, and they release a sequel, there's a good possibily i'll purchase it new. Bam a sale they wouldn't have had before.

So what you are saying is that publishers need to force consumers to go digital.  I believe we already covered this ground and forcing your consumers to do anything has a very high price if they do not want to go your way.  Yeah, something tells me that there are some huge holes in your plan.  How can a publisher make buying digital more appealing???  I thought thats what MS was trying to do with that whole family share plan and being able to resell, gift or loan a game.  Was this not what people wanted in a digital game??

Look at Minecraft on the PC, 11 Million people have bought it on the PC with that number still rising, all digital too.

Persuade, not force. Persuade, not force. Persuade, not force.

Do you get it yet? Do you understand the difference between coercion and persuasion?

What can they do? Be price competitive. Offer free DLC or season passes to people who buy digital versions. Whatever. Reselling your digital games is some that should ultimately be implemented into all digital marketplaces, but until it is, give people a reason to pick the nonexistent, unresaleable digital copy over the very real, very resaleable physical one.

Its not persuading if your only option is digital.  No one would view it as such.  You can give it whatever name you want but its the perception that will win out on how people view it.  As we have seen already, when choices are limted, consumers view it as a negative not a positive.

The problem with giving consumers free stuff is that the expectation will be that you need to give me something more than a great game to get my money.  There are plenty of examples where consumers to not appreciate such things and only feel more entitled when developers go this route.  Basically is like a girlfriend.  If you start the relationship giving a lot of stuff, you have to continue to do it as the expectation will be that this is the norm not the exception.

I really get the sense you aren't reading my posts before responding. I am not suggesting your only option should be digital. I am suggesting that they sell digital copies more cheaply than physical copies. They represent a worse value, so selling them for the same price is ludicrous. You want to know why digital hasn't taken off on consoles? That's why.

But it's not entirely true that going digital only is seen as a negative. No one complains that XBLA or PSN games are strictly digital. It's just accepted that those games can't maintain a retail presence. The Xbone was seen as anti-consumer because it was pushing digital. It was seen as anti-consumer because it maintained a retail presence while making physical copies restricted in much the same way as digital ones, something that had no tangible benefit to the consumer but a whole lot of benefit to Microsoft. It's called loss aversion, and if Sony hadn't offered a comparable device without those restrictions, the backlash would have been nowhere near what it was because you wouldn't have had much of an option. If you want to play those games, you would have had to deal with this bullshit. So most people would have grumbled but gotten on with their gaming in this newly restricted form.

I'm tired of going round and round and saying the same things over and over again, so I think this will be my last word on it. If used game sales are so awful for the industry, then the industry needs to combat them in a way that doesn't degrade the consumer experience. It's as simple as that. You can call consumers entitled, but they are no more entitled than an industry which tends to spend more money than it can afford to spend on a given game and then blames the consumer when they didn't want it, largely because most AAA games look suspiciously similar to every other AAA game. This homogenization and poor budgeting is the real threat. If the industry shifted to digital tomorrow, the cost savings would be eaten up in no time flat if budgets continue to explode as they have done and if game makers don't start trying to broaden the audience instead of narrowing it to people who want to play some permutation of Battlefield of Duty or Gears of Uncharted.

Step 1: Get budgets under control.

Step 2: Diversify the offerings.

Step 3: Profit.