I wonder why they wouldn't just structure pricing to incent users to move towards the digital versions. You can pay the $60 for a disc based game and all the benefits/drawbacks therein or... pay $30 to get it digitally and be able to play it from any of their consoles and lend it to friends like they originally planned.

Rather than backtrack, keep moving forward but do it a little bit more slowly... the way Amazon did/does with Kindle.