Okay, there are a few things that need to be said about this. Both in defense of the game manufacturers, and in defense of the used game market as well:
In their defense:
- - These aren't exactly new. Nintendo has been releasing "event" exclusives for ten years with few complaints, and I still get a reminder to register my version of Baldur's Gate even though it's a game from the 90s.
- Those big bad registration codes are for protection against piracy, which is why they're nothing new. It's entirely on GameStop -- if they won't give you the codes, you shouldn't give them your business (and if a selling gamer won't give GameStop the codes, they shouldn't buy it either).
- With only a couple of exceptions (like Zaeed and Kasumi from ME2), a lot of that "downloadable content" has little to no effect on the actual gameplay. You can live without them, and in some cases, you may even be better off.
- If they are necessary, you can always use that to talk down the price.
Of course, the gaming manufacturers would do best to keep in mind that games can only be bought used if somebody else decides they don't want them anymore and sells them. If they are
really so concerned about profit losses to the used gaming market, the best course of action would be to try to produce games that people
won't consider selling to GameStop for chump change. The last time I went to GameStop, they had copies of
Halo 3,
Cursed Mountain,
WWE Legends and (especially)
Guitar Hero stocked up the yin-yang, but I walked out of there with the only copy of
Pokemon: Platinum they had.
GameStop only makes a profit on their games when somebody decides they'd rather get a few extra bucks instead of letting what they consider to be a total P.O.S. collect dust or rot in a landfill (only game I ever sold = Final Fantasy XII, which was, make no mistake, a total P.O.S.). If they want to stop us from buying used games, their effort would be better spent convincing people that are buying their products new to keep them.