Miffed at the possibility that new game consoles could lock out used games? Get used to it.

"I've heard from one reliable industry source that Microsoft intends to incorporate some sort of anti-used game system as part of their so-called Xbox 720," Kotaku's Steven Totilo wrote on Wednesday morning. I have no reason to doubt that he heard that. It doesn't necessarily mean it's happening – at this point, Microsoft is probably considering all sorts of features for its next Xbox console and floating them by game developers to see what the reaction is. But I'm sure it's something that's being very strongly considered. Also, the death of used games is inevitable.

PlayStation Vita, Sony's next portable game machine, should be seen as an interim step on the road to the no-used-games future. Every Vita game that is released on cartridge (read: can be sold or traded) will also be released as a cheaper download (read: one owner). Sony would love it if Vita was like iPhone, and every game was sold digitally – no cost to produce the goods, no possibility of used sales. Customers currently expect gaming consoles to act a certain way, though. They expect to be able to go to the store, buy a game and sell it back. And they expect to be able to buy pre-owned games at a lower price.

But the success of digital-only, one-owner games on PC, phones, tablets and social networks must surely be helping to change consumers' attitudes about what a game system is "supposed" to do. So as soon as Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo et al. think they can get away with it, the disc or cartridge will simply disappear, replaced entirely by digital game sales. What we are possibly looking at now is an interim period in which the disc as a delivery method is still around but it becomes more like a PC game, which are sold with one-time-use keys that grant one owner a license to play the game on his machine.

Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games are already locking away significant content, like Catwoman in Batman: Arkham City, behind just such a scheme. It's not that far of a leap to just locking up the whole game. The only thing keeping them from doing so, besides customers' expectations, is the fact that an Internet connection would be required. In 2010, a study said that 78% of PlayStation 3 owners and 73% of Xbox 360 owners had their consoles hooked up to the series of tubes. That's a lot, but 27% of Xbox 360 owners is still a few million people who can't play any content that requires online verification.

Should Microsoft come up with some scheme that ensures only one owner per game without requiring an Internet connection, that would be a whole different ballgame.

Now, would this mean that used games would instantly disappear from the shelf at your local GameStop? Maybe not. What could happen is exactly what happened with the Catwoman situation. GameStop sold used copies of the game along with new Catwoman download codes, which is presumably purchased in bulk from the publisher. Thus, the publisher gets its cut of the used game sales, which is all it's really after. I would not be surprised to see a similar deal, wherein GameStop pays the publisher to get a new code for each used game it sells. If you're wondering where all that money would come from, you need look no further than your own wallet. GameStop will simply pay customers less for each game disc that they trade in.

The disc still has a use. If the so-called Xbox 720 is going to use Blu-ray discs (and I do not see why it wouldn't), then it would still be impractical to download and store a library of games that take up 20 GB of space each. The disc would still be necessary to store all the content, but it can fill that role while still being only tied to one owner.

Note that nowhere in this analysis have I raised the question of whether or not this is a good idea. In 2010, after a creative director at a major game publisher that is currently having serious financial difficulties suggested that used game buyers are "cheating" his company, I (largely relying on great analysis by Bill Harris of Dubious Quality) pointed out that the relationship between used game sales is much more complex and symbiotic than game publishers would have you believe. One wrinkle: People who buy new games sell those games back to fund the purchase of more new games.

What happens to the sales figures of new games when they can't do that anymore? Nobody knows. But if Microsoft does take steps to curtail used-game sales on the next Xbox, we'll find out.

Photo: Akyan/Flickr