Rumors surfaced yesterday that Microsoft's next-gen Xbox will be manufactured with a method for blocking gamers from playing used games. We’re not exactly sure what that means, or how it would be implemented, but the basic idea is that the Xbox 720, or Loop, or whatever, won't allow used games to be played on the system.

News of this function fired off a massive Internet backlash, with countless commenters railing about how they’d never buy an Xbox 720 if they can’t play used games. And while I certainly agree that limiting your customers’ choices is a very dangerous way to move forward in business, I think that Microsoft may actually be doing the right thing here.

Put aside, for the moment, the arguments against publishers getting cash for used sales. We all know it doesn’t make sense for used games to be treated differently than used cars. The bottom line, however, is that publishers want a slice of that pie, and they’re going to do anything they can to get it. The current solution is the Online Pass, which most gamers would agree is a complete disaster.

Online Passes are engineered to ensure that publishers get a taste of any after-market sale of their games, but mostly serve as enormous headaches to the people that bought the game new. Anyone that had to suffer through Battlefield 3’s ridiculous registration process will know what I mean. And as we move forward, more and more publishers are going to slap Online Passes on their games.

The way I see it, we have two potential used game futures: In the first, every game we buy will have an Online Pass from whatever publisher owns the game, requiring an obnoxious registration code and all the trappings we’ve already encountered. In the second, used games are blocked at the console level, and you purchase your Online Pass directly through Xbox Live or PSN. Neither option is good, but one is clearly better than the other.

Having the console deal with used game access stops publishers from making convoluted Online Pass schemes, and ensures you have access to Xbox’s support network instead of some random person at whatever publisher happened to make your game. It’s not ideal, but it’s certainly better than what we have at the moment.

I don’t agree with the concept of preventing players from accessing used games, but it’s not like Online Passes are going to fade away. One way or another, we’re paying that money to the publisher – would you rather do it through Xbox Live or a dozen different registration websites?

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