Silicon Knights Boss Says Used Games Drive Up Prices

[Kroxile]

Bullshit.

The only thing that increases the cost of new videogames is greed. Plain, simple, cut, and dried.

When the medium does eventually go to digital distribution publishers will still charge $60+ dollars for their games. It won't matter. Piracy, Used Games, etc are just fall guys that these companies use to justify their greed and piss poor treatment of their customers.

Well actually if developers and publishers did get a cut from resales we might see the price come down again.

Though if they stayed the same, everything you said would be justified.

Why should they get a cut? In order for the game to be sold used it had to have been bought new at some point.

The publisher already got theirs. They have no right to anything after that. If you had a garage sale how would you feel if all the designers and creators of the stuff you were selling showed up demanding a cut of everything you sell?

As a couple others have already said: I find it hard to give a flying fuck that publishers and developers are crying about profits in an industry that has turned profits as much as this one has in the current economic situation.

 

[vxicepickxv]

If Dan Dyack wants revenue from used games sales, the NYSE tag for Gamestop is GME. It's about 25 bucks a share, and posted a 15 cent dividend per share last year.

 

[Meight08]

i saw 'silicon knights' and my first thought was 'so .... a company that makes shitty games is bitching now? good for them, hate see them waste time on making a game of theirs good'

meh, just another dev whining about not getting the cut from a sale they have no claim to

Did you actually even read it?
He says that syndicated used games sellers like gamestop removed the possibility of long term sellers.
THAT IS A BAD THING.

i skimmed it.
well for them its bad, but then again, i pretty much just use steam now, so, i couldn't really care less about what ever lame 'rewording' they wanna use for they're crying over, again, 'not getting a cut of sale they have no claim to'

sides, with all the crap most devs and publishers pull on us, i find it hard to care when they start bitching like this

But he said that digital distribution is a great thing!
He said that the loss of long term sales sucks and force publishers to sell allot of copies early.
But some dev's can survive on low selling over a long time but that has been stopped by gamestop.
Tough luck for them sell a million copies in a month or die! it goes now.
Steam is an example of selling in the long run.
Digital distribution returns the long term sales that the industry lost back in the early 2000's

 

[toomuchnothing]

Damn you Mr Chalk. Thanks to that Amazon link I'm ordering dirt cheap blu rays of T2 and The Thing and I find myself searching for more!

OT: Digital distribution would probably play a much larger role if they actually gave us more incentive to use it. Charging me the same price as a physical copy with no real bonus is ridiculous.

 

[MrBrightside919]

Oh lord...here we go again...

I really have trouble taking Dyack seriously after the two bombs Silicon Knights made, X-men Destiny and Too Human...

This, my first thought was "why are people listening to this chump?"

I wouldn't call him a chump. His company has made good games in the past. Not sure why they aren't these days...

 

[Nimzabaat]

i saw 'silicon knights' and my first thought was 'so .... a company that makes shitty games is bitching now? good for them, hate see them waste time on making a game of theirs good'

meh, just another dev whining about not getting the cut from a sale they have no claim to

Just to add to your point. "A company that got a huge government grant, made an incredibly shitty game with it and laid off a bunch of employees. (possibly pocketing the grant money because it sure as hell didn't go into the game?)" Anyways yeah, not a whole lot of respect for his opinion either.

 

[Andy Chalk]

I think a lot of people are missing the central fallacy of Dyack's argument, which is that game prices have gone up. They haven't. Maybe they haven't gone down, but neither has the price of gas, food, hookers or anything else we spend money on every day. A major, triple-A release cost me 60-70 bucks 25 years ago, and it costs me 60-70 bucks now. That's actually kind of amazing.

And the used games market may be bigger than ever now, but back in Dyack's imaginary future, PC game rentals were a thing too. Can you imagine someone trying such a thing now? The market has changed, absolutely, but this constant worry about its imminent collapse, when all measurable indicators say that the videogame industry has never been healthier, leaves me baffled.

 

[Kroxile]

Since you seemed to miss the future tense in which I wrote my post let me clarify.

When all games are digital downloads only publishers will still charge obnoxious sums of money. It won't matter.

And people won't buy it so they'll fall in price.

If they did that they would be fucking idiots like all the people attacking everyone who even dares to say anything against used games.

PC games don't have used games. Portal 2 fell from 40? to 20? in less than a year. A game without any way of second hand sales.

Hrhr, ad hominem makes you smart.

Really, though... you underestimate the stupidity of gamers? Have you missed all the "boycotts" that only turned around and made record sales?

Where have you been during the entirety of the Call of Duty franchise? Hell, how about Madden?

Yeah, gamers are pretty stupid with their money and spineless to boot. Don't think that for one second that the publishers don't know that.

 

[Tanis]

When a good company, like Atlus, says something...let me know.

Crappy companies can go bone themselves.

 

[ewhac]

Wow, I thought Yahtzee was just cracking jokes when he described Too Human as, "The game Silicon Knights have been making instead of Eternal Darkness II, possibly out of a [strong]crippling fear of money and success.[/strong]" But no, apparently he was spot-on, and they really are that dumb.

Videogames used to have a long tail, he explained, which meant that a game put on the market could maintain decent sales and generate revenues for several years. But the rise of used games effectively destroyed that aspect of the business, meaning that games must now earn the vast majority of their money within the first three months of release, and publishers who might otherwise thrive on relatively flat but steady "recurring revenue" suffer as a result.

If I'm not mistaken, these are the very same geniuses who claimed to absolutely [em]loathe[/em] having their titles put on the ten dollar rack -- in other words, the very same "long tail" they now wax nostalgic about.

News Flash, Bernanke: I almost never buy used games, principally because they're overpriced. I could get the new game for $60.00, or the used copy for $55.00. [em]Are you fscking kidding me?[/em] A lousy 10% discount is what you get on [em]new[/em] merchandise on obscure holidays like Arbor Day, not on a second-hand copy of unknown provenance.

I don't know how to solve the GameStop problem, either, but an excellent first step would be to acknowledge that your problem is GameStop and is [em]not[/em] used games themselves.

Dyack did state that he thinks "digital distribution is going to play a big role in things to come" but even at the retail level, new game prices have stayed virtually flat for at least a quarter-century.

Okay, this is just a flat-out lie. I remember new games going for $30.00 less than 20 years ago. Then they nudged up to $40.00, then $50.00, and now here we are at $60.00. Even adjusted for inflation, that's nowhere close to flat.

 

[ph0b0s123]

So the console market could be like the PC market, where there is no used market and where the prices are going up to match console game prices. This guy is living in a fantasy world where companies would pass on to the consumer the saving they made by not having a used market. Never going to happen.

 

[bobmus]

Notice that you can't make a used game out of a digital copy. So why are we still paying high prices for them? By this logic a full move to digital distribution (which will happen eventually) would mean a price drop (greater than that which we should already expect due to lowered distribution costs). Well here's hoping...

 

[Meight08]

Notice that you can't make a used game out of a digital copy. So why are we still paying high prices for them? By this logic a full move to digital distribution (which will happen eventually) would mean a price drop (greater than that which we should already expect due to lowered distribution costs). Well here's hoping...

Its the retailers they boycott games that are cheaper digital than boxed

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

go away Dyack, nobody likes hearing a hack trying to act like he's smart

 

[gigastar]

Bullshit.

The only thing that increases the cost of new videogames is greed. Plain, simple, cut, and dried.

When the medium does eventually go to digital distribution publishers will still charge $60+ dollars for their games. It won't matter. Piracy, Used Games, etc are just fall guys that these companies use to justify their greed and piss poor treatment of their customers.

Well actually if developers and publishers did get a cut from resales we might see the price come down again.

Though if they stayed the same, everything you said would be justified.

This excuse was used already. They said that online passes would help fight used games and would keep servers up longer. Which they don't. They won't drop the prices of games. Anyone who thinks they would is just lying to themselves. I almost never buy used games, but I'm all for them because it's used games that benefit the consumer the most. They exist because someone can offer them a product for cheaper with the same experience. To me that says they might sell more new games if the prices were cheaper.

I didnt bring up online passes. Nor did i say that they would help.

But if publishers got something like 3% of what retailers made from reselling thier games, they might feel more inclined to drop the prices of new games.

Also this time please note the hypotheticals.

Why should they get a cut? In order for the game to be sold used it had to have been bought new at some point.

The publisher already got theirs. They have no right to anything after that. If you had a garage sale how would you feel if all the designers and creators of the stuff you were selling showed up demanding a cut of everything you sell?

As a couple others have already said: I find it hard to give a flying fuck that publishers and developers are crying about profits in an industry that has turned profits as much as this one has in the current economic situation.

I see i need to explain in a little more detail.

Well if they got a small percentage cut of the resale value from retailers, they wouldnt need to keep prices on new games at a constant because profits from resale years after release would make up for the lower initial price of a new unit.

And the garage sale analogy doesnt apply. While theyre not protected by any laws as far as i know, im fairly certain that any attempt to apply such a measure to them would be met with universal resistance.

And as for publishers crying about falling profits, its clear that youre only thinking about the successful piblishers, namely Activision, EA, Capcom, Nintendo and Ubisoft. Who you should be thinking about here is Konami, Namco-Bandai, Squeenix, THQ and Deep Silver, none of whom are doing particularly well for various reasons and one of which isnt likely to survive this year.

Yeah, gamers are pretty stupid with their money and spineless to boot. Don't think that for one second that the publishers don't know that.

I like to think that for every one wisened up gamer like ourselves, theres another 5 who dont consider or care about the industry behind them.

 

[sunburst]

I think a lot of people are missing the central fallacy of Dyack's argument, which is that game prices have gone up. They haven't. Maybe they haven't gone down, but neither has the price of gas, food, hookers or anything else we spend money on every day. A major, triple-A release cost me 60-70 bucks 25 years ago, and it costs me 60-70 bucks now. That's actually kind of amazing.

And the used games market may be bigger than ever now, but back in Dyack's imaginary future, PC game rentals were a thing too. Can you imagine someone trying such a thing now? The market has changed, absolutely, but this constant worry about its imminent collapse, when all measurable indicators say that the videogame industry has never been healthier, leaves me baffled.

That is one of the two main issues with Dyack's argument. The second is that used games are not to blame for the lack of longevity in sales. Shamus Young posted this interesting article [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/8040-Bargains-Are-for-Cheaters] explaining how the used market is a reaction to the industry's refusal to lower prices over time. Works from every other entertainment media competing with used sales cost less the longer they've been out. This is not a complex system. Films that develop cult followings on DVD generate money over time because the barrier for entry drops low enough to justify a financial risk. When games disappear from stores without dropping in price, latecomers will take advantage of used sales to achieve the same end.

There's a reason many believe Steam sales are the true meaning of Christmas; it's the same reason Gabe Newell's pool keeps overflowing.