User blog comment:Lancer1289/MICROSOFT PROVES IT LISTENS!!!!!/@comment-68.9.20.90-20130623072512

Microsoft made a smart move. It was also a lucky move for the video game retailers, and for us. Retailers make pennies compared to the publisher for new game sales, and much of their revenue comes from used game sales. If Sony had followed MS's lead, a lot of retailers would have gone under; no, not GameStop, I'm talking the small businesses, the "Mom & Pop" stores; throw in the loss of rental services like Gamefly, and it would've been a painful blow to an economy that, frankly, doesn't need another kick to the lumbago.

For customers, it's an issue of rights, plain and simple. These policies are part of a push to turn video games from a product-based industry into a service-based one; With three main companies having a virtual monopoly on home consoles, that shift would essentially create an industry similar to the telecommunications industry; fees on top of fees, hidden deeper and deeper in the contracts, and no way to escape because every other company does the same thing; competition without actual competition, with the consumer getting the shaft every time the bill arrives in the mail. It's a consumer nightmare. Sony didn't play the game this time, but if they ever do... Hope that Nintendo doesn't follow suit.

MS tried to change the name of the game, but the consumer caught on, the media picked it up, and the investors, the ones MS actually listens to, became concerned. MS backed down, not because of us directly, but indirectly. And that's a victory by any other name.

-O4343