I totally agree. I have no idea how anyone could suggest that banning the sale of used games could be a good thing. When I'm finished with anything I own, I should have the right to sell it to someone that wants it, whether I do that privately or through a middle-man retailer.
Is the Used Game Market Damaging the Industry?
- Thread starter archangelmorph
- Start date
I totally agree. I have no idea how anyone could suggest that banning the sale of used games could be a good thing. When I'm finished with anything I own, I should have the right to sell it to someone that wants it, whether I do that privately or through a middle-man retailer.
You can no more ban used games than you can used cars or homes which aren't brand new.
I guess with digital distribution, they can get around this, unless the consumers band together and say no like they did to Divx DVD players. If they price DD games like they do shrink-wrap, it is a ripoff.
You could argue that a certain percent of games sales is due to people expecting to be able to re-sell it later.
You could also argue that a certain percent of games sales is financed by people who've sold their games.
If publishers think that if somehow they eliminated the used games market, their revenues would shoot up, they're kidding themselves, the same way the RIAA and MPAA think piracy is holding their sales way down.
I guess with digital distribution, they can get around this, unless the consumers band together and say no like they did to Divx DVD players. If they price DD games like they do shrink-wrap, it is a ripoff.
You could argue that a certain percent of games sales is due to people expecting to be able to re-sell it later.
You could also argue that a certain percent of games sales is financed by people who've sold their games.
If publishers think that if somehow they eliminated the used games market, their revenues would shoot up, they're kidding themselves, the same way the RIAA and MPAA think piracy is holding their sales way down.
It seems like a lot of people here buy used games and trade in copies when they're done. So let me ask you guys, is it worth it? What do you get for your average trade-in? $20? What about annual sports series? $5? And is it worth it to you to buy a used copy for $55 instead of $60? Why not just buy & sell on eBay?
I usually pass my games on to friends when I'm finished. I wouldn't buy a used game for $5 less. If I REALLY want a game, I buy it right when it comes out. Otherwise I wait until I can find it for a significant price drop, either from being discounted or as a used title. Sometimes my friends give me stuff.
I usually buy new, normally I buy the games I want as they come out as much as I can. I do the same for dvd's and music, I will pay my $10 to go watch a movie or go to a matinee, the only way to keep those industries and hobby's that I love so much is by supporting them and allowing them to make a profit, if not, it will just not happen.
As for the people bringing up cars and houses, that's a complete different market, they are making a profit the moment they sale you the house or the car. They do not need to sale 100 houses at full price in order to break even.
I actually never sell back used games. I just buy them and hoard them.
The game store provides a service just like the grocery store. You don't have to physically create something to add value.
valioso said:
An automobile manufacturer is most certainly not making a profit on selling a single car. Like software they spend millions of dollars on development and testing.
I can see it now! "Gamer found dead today, after a pile of old games he never plays anymore. A representative of EB games has come forward saying that this tragedy could have been averted if the gamer had just traded his games"
Cute stuff aside, I think what smarts the publisher is that the same dvd can make it through 10-20 sets of hands in less than a year with most of the money going to the store rather than publishers. It's like renting without the royalties. The analogy between this and a used car is false because the used car deprecitates and loses value because of perception in the market and the risk of buying a lemon.
I don't think they would be complaining if the games only went through a few hands... but the cycle is repeat et all.
On to another point... With online distribution which makes sharing difficult and 2nd hand markets impossible. Do you think that a lower price should be given to firstly compensate you for the lack of a resale option and to reward you for choosing the low cost distribution model? If so what price feels acceptable to you?
Lastly, thanks Pete for deleting my rude post in the 8.1 thread! I was in a bad mood and regretted it instantly. (no delete/edit
)After a year, the average video game is worth probably about half of its original MSRP. And unless it becomes a quasi-collector's item (Harvest Moon for N64, Ikaruga for Dreamcast, etc), it will soon be worth a paltry three to five dollars in 5 years. You don't call that depreciating? By the way, houses appreciate. Think of the lost revenue to the building contractors! They must be going out of business! People should be required to build new houses instead of buying old ones.
And I'm saying it doesn't matter because it's a fundamental part of property rights. Complaining that a game can change hands 10 or more times (probably an exaggeration--I'll bet the average is much lower) is nothing other than complaining that once you've sold a piece of property to someone else, it's not yours anymore. My message to publishers: Boo hoo, you made it, you sold it, and now you're upset that it's not yours anymore? Then you need to get out of the market entirely, because you clearly don't understand what the words "buy" and "sell" mean.
In general or personally? In general I think that having a hard copy is infinitely preferable, because then I'm actually buying a long-life good rather than a short-life service. I hoard games because I enjoy pulling out long-forgotten treasures when all the current offerings suck. I derive weird pleasure from seeing my bookshelves stacked with games. I wouldn't consider a digital download worth more than about ten bucks. I would potentially consider it worth more if it was actually mine after I downloaded it, i.e. it didn't have to "phone home" in order to run or wasn't locked to one particular machine. As it is, there are very few games I would consider worth more than $20 for a hard copy.
Generally, though, it's worth what people will pay. If the masses are willing to pay $60 for downloads they can't sell back or use after their console is no longer supported by the manufacturer, I can't fault publishers for selling that high. The free market cuts both ways.
Last edited by a moderator:
fearsomepirate, we're definitely on the same page on this one. I can't believe that anyone would actually consider listening to this complaint from the publishers.
I have bought the HL2 stuff online via steam, but I do prefer to own physical copies so I can sell them or pass them on. But on the ethical/legal arguments of buying/selling games, I agree with you 110%.
I have bought the HL2 stuff online via steam, but I do prefer to own physical copies so I can sell them or pass them on. But on the ethical/legal arguments of buying/selling games, I agree with you 110%.
It all boils down to the nature of the product. Games.
Games are supposed to be fun. You make a fun game, you get a higher attach rate. You make an engaging, immersive experience...you get happy consumers. You have to make people want to continue to return to your game. If you make a game that that leaves the impression in someones mind that they will definitely want to play the game again at sometime in the future, then they are less likely to sell it.
You make a bad game....you end up getting bad reviews/previews/word of mouth etc. Less people buy it at launch and more people sell it when they stop playing half way through..not wanting to play it anymore. The problem isn't so much the used game market...it's the failure of the game creator's to realize how important the "Game"part of video game is, if they want to see the $$$$.
Walk into a used game store. Look at the used game selection...the used shovelware-craptastic title's always outnumber the the used AAA titles. I would be willing to bet that at almost any used game store on the planet you could draw a correlation between the number of copy's a store has of any used game, it's relative score on Gamerankings.com and the amount of time a game has been released. Good games are always less likely to appear in the used section than bad games.
To me it's just common sense. If you are in the business of making games, you need to make good games. Listen to the consumers. Test the hell out of your game while your making it. Listen to what game testers say back to you, and implement it. Polish the game before you release it. Spend good money on the creative side of your project. Be aware of how high the bar is set in your respective genre. Don't make a game in a saturated genre unless you feel VERY confident that you can compete creatively with the best games in that genre. Support your title. Support the people that buy it. Keep your finger on the pulse of the gaming public. Read the major public gaming forums religiously and pay attention to what the majority of "Us" say. You do this kind of stuff and you'll never have to worry about a second hand market....ever.
Games are supposed to be fun. You make a fun game, you get a higher attach rate. You make an engaging, immersive experience...you get happy consumers. You have to make people want to continue to return to your game. If you make a game that that leaves the impression in someones mind that they will definitely want to play the game again at sometime in the future, then they are less likely to sell it.
You make a bad game....you end up getting bad reviews/previews/word of mouth etc. Less people buy it at launch and more people sell it when they stop playing half way through..not wanting to play it anymore. The problem isn't so much the used game market...it's the failure of the game creator's to realize how important the "Game"part of video game is, if they want to see the $$$$.
Walk into a used game store. Look at the used game selection...the used shovelware-craptastic title's always outnumber the the used AAA titles. I would be willing to bet that at almost any used game store on the planet you could draw a correlation between the number of copy's a store has of any used game, it's relative score on Gamerankings.com and the amount of time a game has been released. Good games are always less likely to appear in the used section than bad games.
To me it's just common sense. If you are in the business of making games, you need to make good games. Listen to the consumers. Test the hell out of your game while your making it. Listen to what game testers say back to you, and implement it. Polish the game before you release it. Spend good money on the creative side of your project. Be aware of how high the bar is set in your respective genre. Don't make a game in a saturated genre unless you feel VERY confident that you can compete creatively with the best games in that genre. Support your title. Support the people that buy it. Keep your finger on the pulse of the gaming public. Read the major public gaming forums religiously and pay attention to what the majority of "Us" say. You do this kind of stuff and you'll never have to worry about a second hand market....ever.
sumdumyunguy
Newcomer
In the US, they did attempt something like this. If you are old enough, you will remember only "Ford" transmission fluid in Ford cars/truks. That did not end to well for Ford, as there are now specific laws that say (among other things) that automobile manufacturers can not void the warranty of your vehicle because you don't use their branded parts or go to the dealer you purchased you vehicle from for repairs.
OT
The OP posits is the Used Game market good or bad for the industry, writ large. However, IMHO, this begs a more fundamental question. Why would a software publisher think that they are entitled to some extra-protection vis a vie a secondary market?
I hate to use an analogy, our most common stock market here is the Dow Jones Industrial Average, I bold Average because it only looks at 30 companies of the thousands listed and this tells us the relative strength of this market. Do you believe that the other couple thousand have never had financial problems, can you not imagine that there are companies who may have been there a decade ago that are, not only no longer listed, but no longer exist?
What you seem to be doing is looking at the International Games Average (tm
I agree looking at the massive profits of the bigger guys is not the way to judge the market at the moment. But you must have missed my line:
Surely you can name a few if you're claiming there's a problem. And once that's done, try and link their struggle to used games.
I personally think that the ones bitching about the impact of the used game market on sales are the EA's, Ubisofts and ActiBlizzions far more than the little guys. These are the ones who routinely spit out the annual garbage, slightly tweaking last year's formula for full price every damn year. Hell, Activision have four Guitar Hero games planned for 2008. Four! That's disgusting.
Somewhat related to the OP, it's not whether the used game market is bad for the industry, it's whether the industry has appropriately adjusted to the fact of the free market and the rights of property ownership. The free market is in some sense "bad" for every industry in the sense that a legislated monopoly is practically always better for the bottom line.
My answer is a definite "no." People clearly love video games, enough to spend billions of dollars on new games. The thing is they obviously are also putting a lot of money into used games priced well below where the suppliers are pricing them, perhaps a disproportionate amount compared to other markets. I personally own ~35 Gamecube games, 3 of which I purchased at full price, and maybe 2 or 3 more which I purchased new, but discounted. A few thoughts:
1. The current strategy of budgeting a jillion dollars, pushing whatever comes out at the end out the door, and crossing your fingers that you'll sell 2 million units is critically flawed.
Publishers and developers need to be more realistic about their target sales. Work on getting some idea of what kind of games sell 150K, 250K, and 500K units. Is it an unknown franchise? Is it launching against Halo or a Nintendo mascot title? Is it a team whose work never scores above the 8's? Then you're not selling 5m units, get over it. Do some more research and maybe test the waters with a few titles to see if you can sell more such games at $20-$40. Finally, budget appropriately.
2. Give me incentive to buy new games.
Online support is a good incentive. Swag for preorders is a good idea. But how about a discount if I trade in a prequel for a sequel? How about a discount if I trade in games you publish for another game you published? What if publishers had some way of buying back games themselves and one-upping the pittance Gamestop gives you?
If you want to make money, understand the market rather than pushing the government to take away people's rights. That is essential to a free society.
My answer is a definite "no." People clearly love video games, enough to spend billions of dollars on new games. The thing is they obviously are also putting a lot of money into used games priced well below where the suppliers are pricing them, perhaps a disproportionate amount compared to other markets. I personally own ~35 Gamecube games, 3 of which I purchased at full price, and maybe 2 or 3 more which I purchased new, but discounted. A few thoughts:
1. The current strategy of budgeting a jillion dollars, pushing whatever comes out at the end out the door, and crossing your fingers that you'll sell 2 million units is critically flawed.
Publishers and developers need to be more realistic about their target sales. Work on getting some idea of what kind of games sell 150K, 250K, and 500K units. Is it an unknown franchise? Is it launching against Halo or a Nintendo mascot title? Is it a team whose work never scores above the 8's? Then you're not selling 5m units, get over it. Do some more research and maybe test the waters with a few titles to see if you can sell more such games at $20-$40. Finally, budget appropriately.
2. Give me incentive to buy new games.
Online support is a good incentive. Swag for preorders is a good idea. But how about a discount if I trade in a prequel for a sequel? How about a discount if I trade in games you publish for another game you published? What if publishers had some way of buying back games themselves and one-upping the pittance Gamestop gives you?
If you want to make money, understand the market rather than pushing the government to take away people's rights. That is essential to a free society.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
You know there are many kinds of software that works with the licence method and games can be seen being quite close to those, especially when they often get patches, upgrades and support even after the purchase. I think it's perfectly valid for these companies to want a compensation from people using their product, whom are also enjoying support for that product.
Of course game stores deserve to get profit. I'm all for free market and all that, but imo the publisher has the right to control it's merchandise and ensure that they benefit most from their IPs, instead of the leecher stores.
Comparing quitars (and whatnot) and software is not meaningful in my opinion... I do understand the parallers of course and clearly the situation with selling new stuff vs old is a very complicated issue, and has led to situation where companies make their products worse than what they could be on purpose just to quarantee future sales etc.
They don't also sell mobile phones or make Wine, because that is not what they do, but the purpose of their business is to make money for themselves and not help game stores to make 5x more money out of their IP than what they are getting themselves. Publishers and developers have also created these IPs and while doing that, they have carried all the risks and hazards, which often times are very high these days...
I think it's fair to say that the used game business hurts the bottom line of publishers and devs atleast to a degree and I'm sure in the future they will take action to secure that their business is better suited for them instead for the leechers...
The money goes in circles anyways... and in this particular case there are big corporations on both side of the fence and my proposition raises the profits for publishers and yours raises the profit for game stores... I have already said in this thread (though nobody wants to quote that...) that of course if the users loses the ability to resell the product, then the price of such product should naturally be lower, but still I don't consider the ability to sell something as the sole defining metric for owning something, you can still use the product whenever you like on your own system, you just don't have the right to distribute somebody elses IP. Having said that I mostly care about the content and not the box on my shelf. If they were to sell these games using non transferable license, but with half or 75% of the price then collectors like you should be happy, the only ones who would really lose something in that scenario are the leecher stores.
Can't say I really understand the sex reference..., but that probably belongs to another sub section anyways.
Film studios (and game publishers) get a cut of rental market revenue. One reason this happened is because the rental industry became consolidated enough that a deal could be made and also because of the supply needs of rental chains.
I suspect a similar deal will be made with EBGS, probably during the next console cycle. The console manufacturers have the ability to force the issue (there were hints about that leading up to this generation of systems), but I think everyone would just be happier if some of the used game revenue made it back to the studios and publishers who are actually making the product.
I don't think we as gamers should be forced to relinquish our right to sell any used product.
However, I feel that MS, Sony, Nintendo and publishers have the right to influence GameStop's contribution to the used game market. GameStop has business relationship with all these companies and if GameStop is engaging in practices that has a negative impact on them, they should be able to leverage any power they have over GameStop to minimize that contribution.
Not only does GameStop inhibit sales of new software by offering used versions of that software. It practically uses new software as a market tool to maximize sales in its used games business.
I don't know why people bring up free market.
Under a free market or a gov't regulated market, MS, Sony, Nintendo and 3rd party publishers would be able to stifle the used game market. The only difference being the avenue chosen to accomplish that goal, one being gov't regulation, basically making used game sales illegal and the other using their leverage as suppliers to threaten GameStop's new hardware and software business to force GameStop to stop used game sales or engage in certain restrictions that lessen the effect of the used game market on new game sales.
However, I think that GameStop's used game business is not that big of a deal to the manufacturers. GameStop does offset some of those used games sales by using trade in to promote new game and hardware sales.
Furthermore, Gamestop's business model is not common place across retail chains. I think the manufacturers have already used their influence to the point where you won't see the big retailers engaging in such a business model. And seeing the profit margin in the used game business, a lot of retailers should have been attracted to the profits a long time ago.
However, I feel that MS, Sony, Nintendo and publishers have the right to influence GameStop's contribution to the used game market. GameStop has business relationship with all these companies and if GameStop is engaging in practices that has a negative impact on them, they should be able to leverage any power they have over GameStop to minimize that contribution.
Not only does GameStop inhibit sales of new software by offering used versions of that software. It practically uses new software as a market tool to maximize sales in its used games business.
I don't know why people bring up free market.
Under a free market or a gov't regulated market, MS, Sony, Nintendo and 3rd party publishers would be able to stifle the used game market. The only difference being the avenue chosen to accomplish that goal, one being gov't regulation, basically making used game sales illegal and the other using their leverage as suppliers to threaten GameStop's new hardware and software business to force GameStop to stop used game sales or engage in certain restrictions that lessen the effect of the used game market on new game sales.
However, I think that GameStop's used game business is not that big of a deal to the manufacturers. GameStop does offset some of those used games sales by using trade in to promote new game and hardware sales.
Furthermore, Gamestop's business model is not common place across retail chains. I think the manufacturers have already used their influence to the point where you won't see the big retailers engaging in such a business model. And seeing the profit margin in the used game business, a lot of retailers should have been attracted to the profits a long time ago.
Last edited by a moderator:
Similar threads
