Sega Exec: Used Game Debate Needs Some "Reality"

[Andy Chalk]

Sega Exec: Used Game Debate Needs Some "Reality"

Used game sales are a fact of life, according to Sega [http://www.sega.com/] Europe President Mike Hayes, and while he may not like it, he's not willing to get behind any serious effort to stop it.

"The whole second-hand games market is one of those very, very sensitive areas that I've got to say Sega keeps a pretty low profile on - and I'll tell you why," Hayes said in an interview with GamesIndustry [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/hayes-second-hand-games-are-a-market-reality]. "I know that there are publishers that are vehemently, aggressively against it. My reluctant view is that while I can understand that, if publishers were to try and enforce a non-second-hand market to the consumer, I think there would be relationship damage with the consumer."

"Of course, commercially, do I support it? Of course not, and I have to think here of the 650 people we employ at Sega Europe," he continued. "However, do we have a successful business working with the retailers that offer that service? Yes, we do. So would I ever join a campaign to get it stopped? The answer is no. Do I like it? The answer is no. I may be sitting on the fence here, but there needs to be a bit of reality on the market."

That "reality," Hayes said, is that used games are "not on our top ten list of things that we need to take action and be concerned about." He took a similar approach to the question of videogame rentals, claiming that Sega has always supported game rentals despite the opposition to it from other members of the industry. But he added that the videogame rental business is still small enough that he doesn't expect publishers to follow the example of the movie industry by providing higher priced rental-only copies of games to retailers.

"If more retailers want to come into that, then an initiative might be looked at. At the moment I think rental is a relatively small part, unlike DVD," he said. "We'll keep a watching brief on it and see if it takes off, and what others like HMV do."

How strangely reasonable is that?


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[thenumberthirteen]

There is a small rental shop in my town, and if publishers start making rental only copies they couldn't afford to rent games any more as the profit is so thin.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

An industry that distributes a sixty dollar product whose entertainment value range can be anywhere from 5 hours to 500? And that time value purely depends on my personal opinion? Reality is the elephant in the freaking room here. If they remove my ability to recoup the potential loss for such an expensive investment, I'm going to explore other options.

If they want to beat the second hand market they've got to stop charging an arm & a leg for every game and come down like the DS and Wii titles. I see No More Heroes for 30 bucks in most places and the DS has tons of great games for 20 bucks.

 

[joystickjunki3]

Sonic Team, as of late, may be disappointing, but Sega as a whole is extremely awesome. And I'll stand by that.

 

[000Ronald]

An industry that distributes a sixty dollar product whose entertainment value range can be anywhere from 5 hours to 500? And that time value purely depends on my personal opinion? Reality is the elephant in the freaking room here. If they remove my ability to recoup the potential loss for such an expensive investment, I'm going to explore other options.

If they want to beat the second hand market they've got to stop charging an arm & a leg for every game and come down like the DS and Wii titles. I see No More Heroes for 30 bucks in most places and the DS has tons of great games for 20 bucks.

That's a double-edged sword, though. It's like Yahtzee said, having massive top-of-the-line processors and hard drives and whatnot implies the need to make everything else top-of-the-line. You could sacrifice some of the cost, thus making it possible to make more games, but the graphics, the story, and (most importiantly) gameplay just might not be as good. I don't know about you, but I'd rather pay 50$ for an awesome game than 30$ for a medeoker one. Quality over quantity. And yes, I know there aren't many really really good games for the PS3 and 360, but they are there, aren't they?

Apologies if I've missed your point enitrely.

 

[L.B. Jeffries]

That's a double-edged sword, though. It's like Yahtzee said, having massive top-of-the-line processors and hard drives and whatnot implies the need to make everything else top-of-the-line. You could sacrifice some of the cost, thus making it possible to make more games, but the graphics, the story, and (most importiantly) gameplay just might not be as good. I don't know about you, but I'd rather pay 50$ for an awesome game than 30$ for a medeoker one. Quality over quantity. And yes, I know there aren't many really really good games for the PS3 and 360, but they are there, aren't they?

Apologies if I've missed your point enitrely.

Don't apologize, if something wasn't communicated its my fault.

I see your argument but I guess the implication that because something is cheaper it's assumed to be bad isn't one folks should encourage. You can get most of the Xbox's best titles right now for twenty bucks, their only flaw being age.

Hell, I think DLC solves most of these issues by just keeping it cheap and reasonable to get old games on your machine. Rez is only 800 points and it's still just as revolutionary as ever.

 

[000Ronald]

I see your argument but I guess the implication that because something is cheaper it's assumed to be bad isn't one folks should encourage. You can get most of the Xbox's best titles right now for twenty bucks, their only flaw being age.

Hell, I think DLC solves most of these issues by just keeping it cheap and reasonable to get old games on your machine. Rez is only 800 points and it's still just as revolutionary as ever.

I'm not saying that if it's cheaper, it's going to be bad, I'm saying that if it takes less money to make it, than it's substanially more likely that it's not going to be of the same quality. Ok, so I am saying it might be worse if less money is put into it. Crap.

My point is, generally speaking, the more work you put into something, the better it is, right? Therefore, logically, if less work is put into it, it's likely going to be inferior. That's not always the case, of course, but it's a general guideline.

Apologies for a lack of clarification.

 

[shatnershaman]

I don't blame publishers for hating on the second hand game market, they only make a 1.5% ($1) of that $60 you pay.

http://www.forbes.com/2006/12/19/ps3-xbox360-costs-tech-cx_rr_game06_1219expensivegames_slide_10.html?thisSpeed=20000

 

[Drake the Dragonheart]

An industry that distributes a sixty dollar product whose entertainment value range can be anywhere from 5 hours to 500? And that time value purely depends on my personal opinion? Reality is the elephant in the freaking room here. If they remove my ability to recoup the potential loss for such an expensive investment, I'm going to explore other options.

If they want to beat the second hand market they've got to stop charging an arm & a leg for every game and come down like the DS and Wii titles. I see No More Heroes for 30 bucks in most places and the DS has tons of great games for 20 bucks.

I agree. I have found that buying used is a good way to get some great deals. A couple years ago during christmas, I was able to get 5 games for under 10$! I was able to get Kingdom Under Fire: The Crusaders for 12 dollars.

 

[AceDiamond]

Sega is one of the oldest, and still one of the wisest companies in the game industry. They don't fight the wind, instead they run with it. Got into consoles when it was good, got out when things stopped being profitable for them. Always the pioneer of arcade machines and such games, and still in the console race through the realization that you can actually do better just with software sales than being the dipshit loosing cash on zero-margin system sales.

If a couple other companies had the Sega outlook, maybe the games industry wouldn't be the pile of suck it is right now.

Well to be fair the reason things stopped being profitable for them was the fact that they completely screwed themselves over but the point is well-made that despite that, Sega still seems to know what they're doing

...except Sonic Team.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

nice to see someone in the game industry with some brains

the whole used game market is just like used anything it will continue to be around no matter what and there's little that can be done to stop it legally, as you legally bought it and you can legally resell it

 

[Jumplion]

Sonic Team, as of late, may be disappointing, but Sega as a whole is extremely awesome. And I'll stand by that.

I second that notion. It's nice to see someone approach this from the consumers perspective surprisingly.

 

[bkd69]

WTF? How dare he talk plainly and rationally and sensibly?
Doesn't he realize his statements are going to appear on the intarnets?

 

[acer840]

They won't close the SHG (second hand game) market. Consumers and retailers thrive off it. Who would buy a $100 GH game with the guitar you already have, when you can get it SH without the Guitar for $50. Or when you can trade in games for other games. It's too big now to close, and if you bought property, you are allowed to resell it.