Developers standing up to gamestop ?

[betan]

good question and I'm not advocating putting GS out of business for that reason alone (selfish).

But, I can see why some pubs are attaching these freebies to new games only. all I'm saying is I don't blame them.

Neither do I. However, apart from the effects of used game market discussion, as a consumer I have to question the direction. What's stopping them from moving some (or maybe more) of their disc content to one-time free DLC to promote early new disc sales? It would practically reduce the trade/resell value without an appropriate price drop. How much far will they go?

As some one who don't really buy/sell/trade used games, I'm all for digital distribution, but only if it's significantly cheaper than the disc. I'd think the posters who actually traded games, would be against this move all together.

 

[eastmen]

Neither do I. However, apart from the effects of used game market discussion, as a consumer I have to question the direction. What's stopping them from moving some (or maybe more) of their disc content to one-time free DLC to promote early new disc sales? It would practically reduce the trade/resell value without an appropriate price drop. How much far will they go?

As some one who don't really buy/sell/trade used games, I'm all for digital distribution, but only if it's significantly cheaper than the disc. I'd think the posters who actually traded games, would be against this move all together.

I'd assume they wont go much further this gen. It will have to do with download speeds and the storage medium. We started this gen with no dedicated storage. The ps3 has a small amount of 20 gig unit in the wild and a large amount of 40 gigs. The 360 has the largest amount of 20 gigs . So devs can't realy switch to much more downloadable space as no one will really have the room.

Next gen though I highly expect to see the low end consoles start with 250 gigs of space and scale upwards. So they may decide to go this route.

 

[saf1]

My opinion - game sales will go down if this is the route the devs and pubs want to walk. Just my take. I know too many people who pick up a new game, play it through till they finish it. Play a bit more depending on replay, level of difficulty, etc - then say ok, lets resell. Ebay or used at favorite game shop. Only to take said money earned to buy the next game on their punch list new.

Hell - we just did this this past Sunday. Returned old xbox and nintendo games. Picked up Warhammer, couple subscription cards, and then pre-ordered world tour and 4 copies of wow's expansion. Easy come, easy go - a win for everyone. Store, publishers, and developers.

Here is my take.

Make a good game, people will buy it.

Just like with any other business it takes money to make money. So stop being cheap @sses and provide quality games with quality manuals including good packaging then include quality content for replay. Keep them coming back and don't nickle and dime the community.

Its not really rocket science to see that people are going to start budgeting their entertainment vices. And the way I see it there is not much wrong in recycling old games which introduces content to new people. And said new people may just in fact buy the next new thing from that dev team... Its no different than the digital music and cd sales. Believe it or not many artists have had a boom in business because their music has made it to the next generation which may have not heard it otherwise...

 

[eastmen]

saf1 there are a huge amount of people who will just switch old games for new used games. That is the main problem. The other problem is that people are constantly trading in and having to add more money to the situation.

 

[thambos]

Who the hell knows how much of that revenue would enter to developer's pocket otherwise?
More importantly how many people would buy a new $60 game if they knew they couldn't sell it.
This is a value added to the product, part of the economy.

there will always be the niche of ppl who will want to resell most of the games they buy. However, if they do that at gamestop they receive much less $ in return for said games and consequently have less money to buy new games again. as opposed to say, eBay.

So even in the exception you're speaking of GameStop is bad for the industry.

And even if the used market disappeared entirely, by some magic, the people who wouldn't be able to afford buying all games at release new for $60 would just bargain hunt, be more selective over which need to be had at release, and buy some games when the price has been reduced (usually 1-2 year(s) later).

This would also encourage publishers to drop the price of new games because they would be seeing more $ in return of their investment.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

I think the difference in fiscal performance favours the publishers. Lots struggle to turn a decent profit, with 7/10 games supposedly failing to break even. If that can be attributed to people buying used instead of new, that's unfair on the creators.

First of all 7\10 games failing to break even, is becaue 7 out of 10 games SUCK!! It has nothing to do with used sales. Its completely normal for 7\10 failing to break even, because gamers dont like playing bad games.

Saying that used games are unfair on the creators is imo ridiculous. Just like with any other product that you buy and own, its your right to sell it if you want to.

If the publisher doesn't break even on a game, its not used games that are at fault here, its 100% their own fault. Either the game was not good enough, or not marketed enough, blaiming used game sales is ridiculous.

I dont see car manufacturers crying and blaiming used car sales when their new model fails, its their own fault.

There is an easy fix to this "used game problem" if we could call it a problem, and that is simply for publishers to lower the prices on their new games.

I dunno why people are supporting the publishers on this, they basically want to take away your rights so that they can rake in bigger profits at your expense.

 

[betan]

there will always be the niche of ppl who will want to resell most of the games they buy. However, if they do that at gamestop they receive much less $ in return for said games and consequently have less money to buy new games again. as opposed to say, eBay.

So even in the exception you're speaking of GameStop is bad for the industry.

I wouldn't call it an exception, nor I would really care about Gamestop, a retailer I practically boycott.

But the arguments I see are mostly one sided.
Some more questions for thought then: If gamestop/ebgames couldn't sell used games how big would they be? How much new games would they sell with a smaller size? What would happen to ebay prices?

 

[wco81]

Only reason why a used games market thrives is because games are prices so high.

If games were $30 instead of $60, there wouldn't be as much trading of used games.

Or piracy for that matter.

Same goes for music and movies.

As for DLC being a message to Gamestop and other used games sellers, well you have exclusive DLC being offered to entice preorders so that seems more like a concession to Gamestop, which takes a lot of preorders and helps publishers.

 

[dobwal]

First of all 7\10 games failing to break even, is becaue 7 out of 10 games SUCK!! It has nothing to do with used sales. Its completely normal for 7\10 failing to break even, because gamers dont like playing bad games.

Saying that used games are unfair on the creators is imo ridiculous. Just like with any other product that you buy and own, its your right to sell it if you want to.

If the publisher doesn't break even on a game, its not used games that are at fault here, its 100% their own fault. Either the game was not good enough, or not marketed enough, blaiming used game sales is ridiculous.

I dont see car manufacturers crying and blaiming used car sales when their new model fails, its their own fault.

There is an easy fix to this "used game problem" if we could call it a problem, and that is simply for publishers to lower the prices on their new games.

I dunno why people are supporting the publishers on this, they basically want to take away your rights so that they can rake in bigger profits at your expense.

Seven out of ten games fail to break even because games don't have the multiple streams of profit generators while having to sell their wares at relatively low prices.

Car manufacturers don't complain about used car sales since the used car market is a consumer of the OEM parts that the auto manufacturers profit off. Also, most auto manufacturers offers financing for both new and CPO sales which means auto mans have a level of profits being generated from other ways other than just new car sales that game publishers could only wish for. DLC or MMO represent two additional streams of income but DLC is just taking hold and serves a limited market and a successful MMO profit stream depends on a hit MMO title which is harder to realize than a 10 million unit selling franchise.

Pubs don't care about individuals hawking their used games, but stores like GameStop have create a used game market worth hundreds of million in sales every year that act as a direct competitor to new game sales. Its should be very understandable why pubs want to either find ways to profit off the used market or limit in some fashion.

I personally think that offering free services or DLC to new game buyers that have to be bought by used game buyers is a very benign way of dealing with used games sales. Ultimately, I think the digital distribution model will literally kill GameStop at least as a B&M store and the used game market in general.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Seven out of ten games fail to break even because games don't have the multiple streams of profit generators while having to sell their wares at relatively low prices.

No they fail because 7\10 game suck. Its that easy. Even if they had multiple streams of income (say DLC) bad games would still not make profits.

Gamers tend to buy good games (or bad games that have alot of marketing behind them) for the most part. Thus the bad games dont get sales, thus no profits.

Just like in the Movie Industry 7\10 movies (or maybe even more) fail to generate a profit.

People do not want to spend their time watching a bad movie, or playing a bad game, when all games and movies are prices relatively a like, they will selected what they think is the best purchase at the time.

The fact that 7\10 games dont break profit is irrelevant compared to the "used-games". It has nothing to do with eachother. Even if there was no used games market, consumers would not start to buy bad games.

 

[specwarGP2]

I dont see car manufacturers crying and blaiming used car sales when their new model fails, its their own fault.

That analogy isn't comparable. First of all, a car dealer would much rather sell you a new car instead of a new one. Gamestop prefers to sell you a used copy.

Second, it's very rare to see a new and used car of the same make, model and year together on the same lot by the same dealer. At Gamestop, you will see used copies of games on the shelf next to the new ones within a few weeks.

Finally, since automobiles depreciate so quickly, someone looking to buy a used car typically cannot afford to buy a new car of the same make and model, thus no new car sales would be cannibalized. At Gamestop, hot used games are only $5 less than new ones. I think it's fair to say that if those used games didn't exist the vast majority of the people buying that particular used game would have no problem spending an additional $5 to buy a new copy.

 

[dobwal]

No they fail because 7\10 game suck. Its that easy. Even if they had multiple streams of income (say DLC) bad games would still not make profits.

Gamers tend to buy good games (or bad games that have alot of marketing behind them) for the most part. Thus the bad games dont get sales, thus no profits.

Quality of any title is relative to current and recent releases in the market it competes in.

If every new game offered in the market in the future was better technically and subjectively than anything offered now. People would just tighten thier standards of quality and we would be back to "If 7/10 games didn't suck".

If I took the 360 and top 3 worst rated 360 games in every genre and went back in time and gave it to you during your NES or Sega Master system days (if you gamed during that time), the best games your past interation would ever play would probably belong to the 360 library of suckiest games for a very long time.

Just like in the Movie Industry 7\10 movies (or maybe even more) fail to generate a profit.

Again, same exact thing, People do not want to spend their time watching a bad movie, or playing a bad game, when all games and movies are prices relatively a like, they will selected what they think is the best purchase at the time.

For the most part all we get is whether a movie is able to recoup its costs from domestic sales ( sometimes profits from foreign sales are shown). The movie industry doesn't reveal the money generated DVD sales (for the most part), rentals or fees generated from cable and TV. There are a ton of movies that failed at the box offices yet through additional revenue streams easily recoup costs and generated profits for the movie industry.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Quality of any title is relative to current and recent releases in the market it competes in.

Ofcourse. And that still makes the 7\10 games suck point valid. Games released in 2007 compete for sales with other current titles. Their quality (or suckyness) is ofcourse measured up to the other competition.

This has nothing to do with used sales. The games fail because 7\10 dont meet the standarts of their current competition. (ie. 7\10 games "suck").

Even if we didn't have used sales, 7 out of 10 games would still fail, as there is still no reason for us to buy new sucky games.

 

[obonicus]

Don't forget that with the typical 5-10 scale (with 5s saved for atrocious games), 7/10, which should've been an okay score is actually pretty sucky.

 

[whome0]

Walmart selling preowned games
They don't have a tradein service, don't know how they get a second-hand games. Anyway I could see this is not the way Activision/EA/MS/Sony want games to be sold. Especially offline singleplayer games go very fast to a preowned shelfs.

Are we going to see a new methods next year how publishers gain some shares from the preowned markets.
* games online paired to a console, first one gets a free activation. Second owners must register online for XXX dollars

 

[Rangers]

Personally I'd like to throw in that for $5 extra I'd just buy the new copy i think, the pristine copy is worth more to me than 8% off the price.

I've never really dealt in used games for that reason for one. Also that I rarely go into a gamestop. Wal Mart may make it more attractive to me because I frequent them.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Are we going to see a new methods next year how publishers gain some shares from the preowned markets.

Book publishers haven't found a way, and books have been around for hundreds of years.

 

[Entropy]

Take a look at this from the parent angle.
The used games market allows you to let your children play at lower cost.
It allows you to teach them a bit about value and trade - you will not buy a new game for them, but if they sell some old games, they can afford to buy what they want.
They can trade directly with each other. Kid A has game he has tired of, and kid B has another that kid A is interested in, and after negotiations they trade.
Not to mention other related issues such as kids lending each other games and so on.

If the publishers are sufficiently obnoxious, parents may just decide that the kid should either
a, watch more TV
b, get off their butt and do something NOT in front of a screen.

Either of which aren't likely to benefit game publishers much.
Annoying parents is not a good idea. They represent a significant percentage of funding and are emphatically not a captive audience.

 

[AzBat]

I'm sorry to say that developers have to have a AAA+++ title for me to buy new. Usually that means day of release. If I don't get it day of release I'll buy it used even if it's only $5 cheaper. However, I will say that preorder incentives have worked for me. I bought Banjo Kazooie Nuts & Bolts because of the free XBLA game. I bought Batman Arkham Asylum for the 2 extra maps, Batarang & other stuff. I bought Halo 3 ODST for the $10 off, Sgt Johnson character & price drop guarantee. If it hadn't been for my wife buying me Halo Wars new as a birthday gift, I would have waited till it was $20 or less used. With that said, personally I'm glad about the increased competition in the used game market. Although it looks like they are not available in my local store and their return policy may not be as good as my local shops.

Tommy McClain

 

[wco81]

EA puts in a code in the manual for Madden 10 to use on the online franchise mode.

I think they do offer to sell new codes for those who buy the game used and the code's already been used.

But the feature is really niche so it's probably not going to have a big impact on used game sales.