To kind of inject my opinion into the center of EchoRedux & HeyCori's little back and forth spat here, I don't think a car is a good/fair analogy to compare against devs deserving residuals on used games - it's an entirely different business model. This is going to be a long post, so FYI.
Cars are generally sold at or above cost for a physical product. If you've done any sort of research into what a dealership might pay for a new car (and used that information to haggle down prices, as I have) then you definitely know this. Still, I realize that there are dealerships that operate on an extremely thin profit margin, or even sell below cost - making up for the cost on things such as interest on financing, upselling of low cost features, extended warranties, etc. Naturally, the bulk of the wholesale price of a vehicle is beyond the relatively cheap manufacturing cost, paying things such as employee salaries, marketing, and the technology that drives the factories - operating expenses. A ton of that cost, and high markup beyond the low manufacturing cost is made at purchase - a consumer is putting up a huge amount of cash for a vehicle all at once.
The physical cost of the disc that a game is on, in volume, is probably pennies - though I suppose you could argue that compared to low costs of auto manufacturing it's similar. A video game development studio incurs costs from licensing game engines, investing in new technologies, game development over a period of years (per game title, for many games), etc. Well technically, to be fair, a publisher will generally take care of licensing costs and such, but it's still part of the overall cost of a game. The publisher that finances the developers has a variety of costs and things to watch out for. As an example, if the developers assure the publisher that a game will be ready by X date, and the publishers market the crap out of it (as they need to, for future sales), the developers might run into a bunch of bugs or development issues that delay the game, resulting in a bunch of pissed off people who generally kind of "move on". Excitement dissipates, sales aren't as spectacular as they could have been, etc etc. Large sales of games typically seem to happen in a relatively short window of time, and things move extremely fast in the gaming world. Gamers are also fickle. If you can't capture that window, you might be sunk. And look at games like Tomb Raider - made $6 million, which wasn't enough and a bunch of terminations were the result of that fiasco. AAA games can cost in the double digit millions to produce, increasingly more so with the demands from gamers (as well as purchasing habits). But AAA games sell at a cost MUCH, MUCH, MUCH smaller than that. There is no "extended warranty" on a game, no money to be made on financing. I suppose you could equate bonus features on a car to DLC, but I would argue that DLC costs more to produce and market than a Bluetooth/technology package on a car. And takes away time from working on the next title to keep the development company afloat.
So... $60 (or maybe around $50 wholesale) for millions in development cost, and that $60 has to cover everything. Well, multiplied by a TON of gamers.
There are also around 24 auto manufacturers in the entire US right now (according to Wikipedia). There are 79 game developers in my city alone (Austin, TX - according to gamedevmap.com. Unsure of accuracy). Not all devs spend double digit millions on games, but every single one of them is subject to the intricacies of putting their games on the market. They all have short windows to capture gamer's short and fickle attention spans. They all need to get their game in as many stores as possible, and find a way to make it interesting enough so that Gamestop Employee #5254 doesn't steer an interested gamer over to the new Call of Duty instead. Profit margins are spread thinly throughout all of these development studios, hundreds of them. Not a fair comparison, you might say? Then check out the list of game publishers in the US, and forget about individual developers. There are a lot according to Wikipedia, though I'm not going to bother counting how many. It's more than 24. Okay, scratch that, I don't want to look like a fool here, there are about 83 actively independent US game publishing companies, and that is not counting those that are a subsidiary of a larger publishing company. All of those are developing using in-house studios, or financing the development of games with game development companies.
Walk into a Honda dealership for a new car, and only Honda makes the profit on your new car. Walk into a Gamestop, and there are hundreds of other game development studios vying for your attention... and it's kind of hard to get a free test drive out of a game, so some people only go with a Gamestop employee recommendation or pretty box art and sometimes a solid marketing pitch on the back of the game box.
To summarize my comparison, an auto manufacturer is not subject to the same types of struggles that the game industry is when it comes to selling their product. A car is also kind of a necessity for a large percentage of the population in developed countries. A video game is not. I think a much fairer comparison would be of games to movies, also part of the entertainment industry. There are a ton of movie studios all over the US, obviously with a huge cluster down in the Los Angeles region. Movies are given HUGE budgets in double and triple digit millions, and sell tickets to those movies at extremely low prices, and DVDs for those movies at extremely low prices (relatively). There are publishing companies that market and sell the movies, while financing the filming and production of these movies through studios both big and small. They are subject to fickle audiences with picky tastes in movies, marketing to draw in the crowds with a limited release window, and there are problems if a movie gets delayed and interest is lost.
Yet, movies make residuals and have other sources of income as well. If I pay $8 - $12 for a movie at the theater and it blows me away, I'm going to pay for the DVD/Blu-ray disc. Or I'm going to pay for a digital download on my Xbox or Amazon or wherever. There's also residual income from royalties whenever a network like HBO airs the movie, or Netflix secures the rights to stream the movie on their network (after paying a large chunk of upfront cash)
The production of games seems to play out in a similar fashion to the production of movies (albeit with smaller crews, and developers in place of actors) and financially I argue that it is similar. The games themselves also have storylines and most tell a story just like in a movie. Some have movies in them. Some basically are movies. And Quantum Break is quite literally combining both (yet TV small screen instead of movie big screen). However, games do not get residuals and do not have any secondary source of revenue. The publishers and developers quite literally only get income once. They basically are forced to sell in supremely large quantities to make up for everything in guaranteed sales, and hope that DLC can help keep continued sales up (word of mouth, more PR about an extension to a popular game, etc).
I think game developers have it rough. Heh, and despite the high rate of employment rotation and pressure, I still somehow want to break in to the games industry for a career.
TL;DR Used game residuals and game development is closer to movie production and residual income in that part of the entertainment industry than auto car sales and the "one time payment" model in the auto industry.