But how does that work when you are trading in the physical disc at Gamestop and you still have the game stored on your console that is disconnected from the internet? Or if you were to sell it virtully, pop in the physical disc onto your first or second console that has been disconnected from the internet before the sale.
Having serial numbers on CD is not above current technology, and I'd wager that the number of people willing to never connect their system to the internet due to the fact they're pirating a bunch of games is statistically insignificant.
Uh, yeah, just require to deactivate the disc before sale. That's reasonable and doesn't have the intrusive feel. This isn't hard.
Edit: I see, if the DVDs are identical then that's not possible. But plenty of software comes with a serial anyways. Just make the serial transferable, problem solved.
Not necessarily, there's already a web component to Xbox Live at xbox.com that you can login to from any browser and you can even do things on it (today) like reset all your Xbox 360 digital content licenses (I think this is limited to once per year) for exactly this sort of situation where your console died and you had to buy a new one.
So, log in to xbox.com, see list of your active licenses, click 'deactive' link on the games you want to forfeit your current digital license for. No console required.
If your console allows you to play disc purchased games without the disc in the console, then being able to "deactivate" the disc on the web before reselling it would allow you to continue to play your game on your un-networked console.
You can't have disc-less disc games that allow trading and don't require some form of "always on". You have to give up one of those; this time around it seems they are giving up "disc-less disc".
