The Future of Xbox Live's Marketplace

1up has an interesting write up discussing the eventual evolution of the Xbox Live Marketplace. Although the article is littered with nuggets, many people have keyed in on the following statement:
Microsoft mentioned a new kind of microtransaction at the session, as well, which they are calling "consumables." These purchases would be re-purchasable items i.e. if a game was selling 100 gold pieces, you would be able to rebuy 100 gold pieces when you needed them. The "consumables" tech will be included in this fall's release of the SDK.

Another thing Microsoft intends to add to the Marketplace is the ability for vendors placed in videogames to allow gamers to buy from the Marketplace. Say, there is a vendor in an RPG selling a rare sword and that sword is available on the Marketplace, players will be able to put the sword in a checkout cart and then return to the Marketplace later to complete the download. For now, the in-game Marketplace will bring the Marketplace experience into the gameplay, but the transactions, for now, will still need to be completed on the Marketplace and not in-game.

Knee jerk reactions aside, as long as this type of content remains optional, I really can't balk at being presented with more choices. Let's not forget that although a hobby, gaming is still a very large business machine. In business, it's never made any sense to give away what people would gladly (in some cases) pay money for. Gamers tend to have the nasty habit of thinking they are somehow entitled to free additional content, this would be an incorrect assumption. Most business's do not operate that way at all, I'll use the Car industry as an example. Say you wan't to buy a new car, so you walk into the dealership and buy a standard economy car. There are additional features that you would really enjoy such as leather seats, a sun roof, perhaps a bigger spoiler. All of which are essentially enhancements to the car, not functionality additions. Each of these enhancements is assigned a value, the only question left to answer here is, how much is it worth to you?