Then the publisher could simply decide to disallow games from being activated on another account.
Or, bundle a CDKey inside the case, but I think this exposes significant fraud risk if a rogue employee cracks open hundreds of cases from a shipment, sells the keys online, then reseals them.
This push to let every company both eat their cake and have it to, when it comes to selling their products but maintaining control over them, is just turning our society into a sort of serfdom again
A particular criticism was that you would not be able to play any games without internet access, which would have made it useless for many people, including for example some military personnel deployed overseas.
I think those instances are being reduced yearly all around the world.
The next generation of consoles will have a low-end version that hosts some of the calculations locally, such as input and collision detection, but all of the detailed rendering etc. on the cloud. All games will be inherently 'online only', distribution of optical disks will become pointless and everything will be linked to an account - no resale.
Even games that were removed from Steam like Hatred could still be downloaded by people who had already bought it.
I think you overestimate how much people are interested in their old games. People just want to move on to the latest and greatest hit.
Because they're bankrupt. Which they will eventually be, the only question is when.