Used Game Sales "Killing" Single Player Titles

SosaAddie30

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Mar 20, 2012
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my buddy's sister brought home $20478 last week. she been working on the laptop and got a $487000 house. All she did was get lucky and apply the information leaked on this website CashHuge.com
 

joest01

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Apr 15, 2009
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Whenever this argument is being made it makes me wonder whether those making it are just uninformed or whether they spread half truths on purpose. First off, the money isn't lost. A good percentage of the money received for used games goes back into new games. The spread between buying and asking price for used games is certainly an issue! If you allowed used sales on psn/xbl/steam and cut out the middle man entirely that would fix it to a degree.
Second, games do age. Very quickly actually. If people really want your game at launch they'll pay for it. Many used game customers were never going to buy it new.
Lastly, if I can play through a game in 2 days and have no desire to keep it but trade it in right away then maybe there is something wrong with your $60 game in the first place.
/Grr
 

theblackmonk90

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Sep 28, 2010
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Lies. All Lies. Does anyone remember the article saying the games industry grew by 11% last year?

Also. Which other entertainment industry is trying to screw the 2nd hand product industry? Cars, CD's, DVD's in fact every product in the world has a 2nd hand market why do the games industry believe they deserve money from that 2nd sale?
 

cieply

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Oct 21, 2009
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Bullshit.

We do the same with cars, houses, art and books. Somehow the bussinessmen in those areas donn't whine about how it's bad for them, as they know it's consumer right. But computer games want to be special snowflakes and get all the do$h. Used sales drop when prices drop, and you have to be retarded to think it goes other way around. Like, seriously mentally challanged, or have a mental capacity of a 10-year old.

Think how much money book publishers lose on libraries! My god, save those publishers or the writers will go bankrupt! Sometimes you just have to accept you can't milk your cosumers for as much as you want.
 

Nikolaz72

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Apr 23, 2009
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Youknow, Retails would not turn that much of a profit if they dropped price from 60 to 30/40 dollars. People wont bother to turn in a game for the 5-10 bucks, which will be the highest the damn stores will give for it if they can only sell it for 20-30.
 

Treblaine

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Jul 25, 2008
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FieryTrainwreck said:
One thing is certain: games are NOT too expensive. You'd have to be 15 years old to even suggest such nonsense.

N64 games cost $70. SEVENTY FUCKING DOLLARS. This was more than 15 years ago. Since then, the prices of food and fuel have sky-rocketed. The cost of living, especially in dev hotspots on the coasts, is through the roof.
Well that was back with cartridges that had inherent expense as ROM is a VERY expensive way of distributing a computer program like a video game, to spite the advantages of speed and convenience.

At the same time as N64 in the mid 90's, PlayStation games and PC games distributed on Disc were only around $45 because CD discs are cheap as hell to make, print and distribute. So going from $45 with inflation, what should DISC BASED games cost.

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi

Interestingly, it comes to just a smidgen over $60 very equivalent to the costs today plus a small amount of DLC.

And games were expensive to make back in the 1990's too. It was balls hard to develop in 3D in the 1990's but easy now as everything builds on previous work and more powerful tools are used. Final fantasy 7 was a huge game, so complex and with so many CG cutscenes. For example the 1998 game Metal Gear Solid had hours and hours of high quality voice acting in both English and Japanese, they hired the best voice actors such as Paul Eiding.

PS: food prices are skyrocketing due to a particular speculation on food supply, it's an aberration. I mean the price of Cocoa had doubled in just a few years to spite the supply slightly increasing and demand staying steady, this could be a food-price bubble, it's definitely quite "frothy".
 

Charli

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Nov 23, 2008
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Ralen-Sharr said:
or they could just develop for PC, and put it on Steam, have a huge customer base and sell their game for years down the line, not having to worry about used sales

fix for consoles - put Steam (or something like it) with a full library on consoles with good games that work for a reasonable price

not sure if the current online distribution platforms for consoles carry enough games, perhaps offering an alternative to retail purchase is the answer - buy physical copy for 60 bucks, digital for 50, or 45.
That looks like where the market is heading. Retailers days are numbered.
 

Strazdas

Robots will replace your job
May 28, 2011
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The situation is a tough one, with no clear solution.
wrong. solution is clear. tell the publishers to f-off. they have no right for resold games. i bought the game i sell it to whoever i want. you already got paid for it. end of. you have absolutely no right to demand more. the key to making money is not charging for same item 5 times, its making the game good enough so people wouldnt return it to re-sale the same frigging day.
 

Treblaine

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Jul 25, 2008
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Grey Day for Elcia said:
gideonkain said:
Movies still come on DVD/BluRay and Music still comes on CDs - so saying that Video Games being sold for 3 times the price of a movie and 6 times the price of a music CD aren't profitable is absurd.
A) Movies make their profit in cinema sales, digital downloads and physical media sales (as well as merchandise, TV slots, advertising, etc., etc.)

A2) People who watch movies: hundreds and hundreds of millions. People who play video games: much less.

B) Music sales account for a tiny, tiny portion of actual revenue. In fact, the artist makes next to nothing at all from CD sales, nor do the people selling them in stores or online. The actual profit for musicians comes from merchandise. The music industry is very bad at making money. 99% of people will never see a profit.

Comparing movies and music to video games doesn't work. So don't do it.
Well... games have revenue streams that movies don't have.

DLC being the main one, a dozen little things that may be maps or weapons. On PC the publisher will often sell a licence for the right to host a game on a server with full integration with anti-cheat and stat-tracking. And of course subscription fees for MMORPG titles but could conceivably apply to others.

Also with games it is possible to just remix the original game, reusing the same digital assets and release a sequel just 12 or 24 months later. Consider Call of Duty but even more so with Assassin's Creed,
2007 = Assassin's Creed
2008 = Assassin's Creed PC special edition
2009 = Assassin's Creed 2
2010 = Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood
2011 = Assassin's Creed: Revelations
2012 = Assassin's Creed III

Pretty much a new release every year for the past half-decade.

And again with Red Dead Revolver's Undead Nightmare that was sold as both premium DLC or as a Stand Alone game. Also Left 4 Dead 2 coming so soon after L4D 1. HL2's episodic content and so on. All built on the same established team and resources. CoD makes vast amounts from selling map packs.

Hundreds of millions play games as well. There are close to 130 million Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 consoles out there and 1 billion PCs connected to the internet with most capable of playing some sort of game. And not to mention how all smartphones are now gaming devices actually capable of rather deep gameplay.

Record companies in the music industry often will not allow the artist to collect ANY royalties from CD sales, they'll just lure them with a giant wodge of money up front to convince them to sign a contract to produce X number of albums or songs. This is how singers can suddenly turn from dirty poor to guying ferraris, they do NOT slowly accumulate revenue from Royalties, and once that money is spent they come crawling back to the record companies rather than floating on royalties from various places.

The publisher model in the games industry however CAN make money off selling games.
 

Grey Day for Elcia

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Treblaine said:
Record companies in the music industry often will not allow the artist to collect ANY royalties from CD sales, they'll just lure them with a giant wodge of money up front to convince them to sign a contract to produce X number of albums or songs. This is how singers can suddenly turn from dirty poor to guying ferraris.
You'll find that the vast majority (easily 99%) of musical artists aren't paid a cent from record companies. People who are actually given money like that and "become rich overnight" are extraordinarily rare.

Having been personally involved in a few bands (in various ways) I learned all too well how much it actually costs to even produce music. You end up in more debt than you do revenue.

But this is all besides the point. On the topic: you cannot compare the movie industry and the music industry to video games--nor can you compare music to movies, movies to TV, books to plays, painting to photography--these are all different fields with their own economies, structures and profitability.
 
Apr 5, 2008
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You buy a game for 60 bucks (or however much it is in your region) and you own the physical copy of that game. You have the right to sell that property in whatever way you see fit, usually back to the store you bought the game which then has the right to resell it. The whole process is completely legal. The problem is that, for many publishers of games, that second or third or fourth sale doesn't add up to more revenue for the title and because of that lost money, some game developers can't get their game published because the audience is more inclined to buy it used.
This subject has been debated to death. Response is still the same. Screw you publishers. It is NOT "lost money". You have zero rights to that money. The physical copy of the game DOES NOT belong to you, it belongs to US and is OURS to sell, give away or re-install on a new computer. Do book publishers complain about 2nd hand book shops? No. In fact, if 2nd hand sales weren't possible those stores would go out of business.

Stop your incessant whining. Here's the thing...it CANNOT kill the PC games market, or even the single-player games market. Why? Simple supply and demand. There will always be a demand and thus someone will develop single player games to fill that demand. If you want our money, it will be your game. If you do not, then carry on not making any titles and we'll make do with whatever is available. Lending and selling our property is our right and we've been doing it since time immemorial.
 

Dastardly

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Apr 19, 2010
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Baresark said:
The thing I'm calling bullshit on is the fact that they say game prices would have dropped if not for those used game sales. That is just a big fat lie. There is no line of reasoning that should/could arrive anyone at that conclusion. It's just a new angle of attack on used games. That is fine, as I said. We all know the EA's, Activision's, and Ubisofts of the world hate used game sales.
And while there's nothing wrong with used game sales, surely you could understand why someone who makes a product might dislike them, right? If you make ten widgets and want to sell them, and five people buy them on day one, get their use out of them, and then sell them to five friends... well, it's going to change how you do things going forward. For one, you'll only make five of the next widget. And, because you still have to recover costs, you'll charge a bit more for each.

Not excusing the behavior, don't get me wrong. But it's easy to understand it, one human to another.

The thing that I find most annoying is the outright attack on stores this causes. If not for those stores (who have been selling used games since the NES days) there would not be a game industry as we know it today. Couple that with the fact there are many large retailers that do not sell used games (such as Walmart). Triple-A title only exist because of stores like Gamestop. If not for them, video games would still largely be a niche part of the market, and not the king of the entertainment industry. Like it or not, without those big evil game retailers, we wouldn't even be having a conversation about videogames.
Not sure I follow your logic here. Someone would have snatched up the used game market, because there was money to be made. But now, we've moved past the point where that would be necessary. Digital distribution is far more effective than it once was, and that could spell the slow death of used game sales... but do you think gamers will stop gaming?

Edit: It all has to do with loss aversion. ... While it's not true, the reaction is much worse at the loss than it is at the gain.
Absolutely. All humans experience it.

I disagree with the dev in the original article that publishers would have lowered prices if the used game market kicked them some cash. However, I can agree that they could have. (The next step would have to have been us demanding it by not buying until they did.)

(It's the whole reason "trickle down" economic policies are bullshit -- in theory, yes, the rich would use that money to create jobs and yadda yadda, but if no one is making them do it, they'll just take the extra money with a big ol' smile.)

But to me, the take-away on things like this is compromise. Should we? Not really. But if we want things to change, something has to happen. Either we stop buying games until the publishers cave, or we find ways to quiet down their risk aversion first, making them more likely to hear us -- and then we follow through and make them hear us.

The fact that we, as consumers, are "discomfort averse" is just as much a problem. We want lower prices, but we're not willing to endure the discomfort and waiting that are necessary to make them happen.
 

random_bars

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Oct 2, 2010
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I'll say what I said last time about this.

The problem isn't with the customers for wanting to buy games for cheaper. It isn't with the retail stores for taking the opportunity to make some extra money. The problem is 100% with the developers and publishers for making games that people don't want to keep. If you want to stop your game from being destroyed by used game sales, here's an idea - why don't you make a game that people don't WANT to trade in en masse the day after they buy it?

There are many ways you can do this. Make a big, expansive game that players can really get invested in. Make a hard-as-nails game that people will get through slowly, step by gloriously agonizing step. Make a game with fun, unique multiplayer that people will want to play for a long time. Make a game with lots of variety and dynamic elements, which you can play through several times and have a completely different experience each time. Make a short but cheap game, which people won't be bothered about trading in since they wouldn't get much back from it. Or just making a really good game that people are going to want to keep hold of to play again in the future.

The video game industry isn't uniquely affected by this issue in any way, other than by its own short-sighted greed.
 

Soak

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Sep 21, 2010
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This is pure gibberish, nothing but a bad excuse.
There are enough examples proving this statement wrong, enough alternative concepts to build on, many of them not contradicting with the common system, but some already established.
See big games like Elder Scrolls, or Mass Effeckt, you can't tell me they aren't making enough money by themselfes, selling full-priced, plus the DLCs. See games from small/indie developers like Magica, Bastion or even Minecraft, which you can get for small money and each can be considered a success, while not even needing big stocks of physical copies.
If the main developers & publishers would want to do it different, think a bit about a proper system and just take a chance, i'm sure it would work out, but they don't want to, so the complaints are nothing but whining.
To compare it with books is even worse, considering i borrow or gift books i've read very often not doing a thing to the book-market, while easy downloadable e-books or audiobooks do more "damage", just as "illegal" copies of games do to the game-market, but that's another thing in need of different solutions.
 

Trippy Turtle

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May 10, 2010
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Prices wouldn't have gone down the amount you resell the game for.
Game stores could say the same thing about them not making enough profit without pre-owned games.
 

faefrost

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Jun 2, 2010
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All of the controversy surrounding this subject is amazing. It is ultimately a self correcting problem. Within 3-5 years Gamestop will have gone the way of the record store. Game sales will be digital distribution via Steam, XBL, etc and the "pawn shop" games merchant model will have been killed off by those that manufacture and supply the actual product. It's that simple. It has already happened to GAME in Europe.
 

Vampire cat

Apocalypse Meow
Apr 21, 2010
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I use steam. On steam I can't resell my games. I'm not bothered because mostly I get great customer service and availability, titles that are not available in stores in my area and many good discounts. I'm a PC gamer, I get my games for PC. If I can't get games online I usually won't buy them, luckily most games ARE available online.

It wouldn't shock me to see physical game sales die out completely in not too long, I know I've completetly abandoned it in favor of the simpler, easier and more available online alternative.
 

gideonkain

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lacktheknack said:
gideonkain said:
Movies still come on DVD/BluRay and Music still comes on CDs - so saying that Video Games being sold for 3 times the price of a movie and 6 times the price of a music CD aren't profitable is absurd.
Uh... compare the budgets of movies/music to video games. Notice that video games have hilariously larger budgets.

Also compare the audiences of movies/music to video games. Notice that the audience of video games is immensely smaller.
Compare the budgets of Movies and Video Games..okay, big movie budgets are between 1.5 and 3 times the cost to create.

http://digitalbattle.com/2010/02/20/top-10-most-expensive-video-games-budgets-ever/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films

You are correct that movie audiences are larger than video game audiences though

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game_franchises
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films