Just to clear it up, I do think that they make enough profit. It was just that the argument works both ways.FelixG said:
Used Game Sales "Killing" Single Player Titles
- Thread starter Greg Tito
- Start date
God damn this fucking nonsense spewing up again.
The games that get returned in a day are the shitty games no one wants.
[incoherent rage]
The games that get returned in a day are the shitty games no one wants.
[incoherent rage]
This whole "used game" BS is all rendered invalid when you bring into play the fact that someone had to buy the game new in order for it to be put on the used market to begin with.
Its not the gamer's fault they don't feel like dropping $60 on a new IP and its not the gamer's fault that publishers make shitty games that no one wants to gamble $60 on.
Its not the gamer's fault they don't feel like dropping $60 on a new IP and its not the gamer's fault that publishers make shitty games that no one wants to gamble $60 on.
No, they wouldn't have. Publishers are going to bleed us any way they can and if there were no used game sales, it just means more profit for them. Besides, if all used game sales and pirating in the world were abolished they'd just find a new boogeyman so they can victimise themselves. Mark my words, in 15 years time it'll be the people who don't buy day-one DLC that will be "killing" the game industry.Greg Tito said:
Yeah, and I'm sure the last Ice Age, as well as the Tunguska Event, were caused by used game sales, too.
Damn those evil used game sales.
These companies simply are trying to kill any competition, that's it. Soon, we who like to play games with good gameplay instead of only good graphics will be accused of leeching and killing the game industry.
Damn those evil used game sales.
No, it'll be indie games. These companies are already pushing heavily against crowd funding, a good source of capital for indie games, and there's already a law proposed to make it harder.
These companies simply are trying to kill any competition, that's it. Soon, we who like to play games with good gameplay instead of only good graphics will be accused of leeching and killing the game industry.
There were several points in my post, so I hope you do not disregard them all because you disagree with one.NameIsRobertPaulson said:
Of course piracy is not the same as buying a used game in general. But when viewed in the context of financial support towards the ones who made the game possible they are interchangeable. So if I all I care about is to support the developer (and new games) then they are equally bad options.
Fuck the Industry. No seriously, fuck those Guys. There is no other Product where i'd have to be concerned in any way when i buy it used. Well except maybe for toilet Paper...
Videogame Developers are the only Industry i know of who openly whine about the used Sales and try to block them.
Pretty much everyone else is glad that you're at least having the brandname sitting around.
Developers should be glad the Games are out there.
If you can't buy used Games, the whole Market would be smaller. A new Title would be less of a Topic to talk about since half the People wouldn't be playing "Modern Warfare 3" but rather play MW2 some more or even MW1 because more People wouldn't bother to invest 60$ for what's in those Games. You can't trade in your used Copy of MW2 if the Store has difficulty reselling it because the Publisher has implemented Stuff to prevent that.
Imagine what it would be like if everyone had to buy mw3 with 60$, without trading in another Game? There wouldn't be as many Players around. Less People who'd buy a Sequel because they aren't willing to pump out that kind of Money for what little is new in the next Title, which will have Multiplayer Servers that may be Ghosttowns in a Year anyway. If you can't trade your Games in, People might as well play older Titles in Multiplayer because they're still there and may be better in some regards.
But seriously, what do i care? I want to play a Game and if i can get it cheaper, i may do so.
I buy the Game and that should be all i have to do to get the People who made the Game some Money.
If i buy a Game used and then have to go through Hoops, i may as well not bother.
Videogame Developers are the only Industry i know of who openly whine about the used Sales and try to block them.
Pretty much everyone else is glad that you're at least having the brandname sitting around.
Developers should be glad the Games are out there.
If you can't buy used Games, the whole Market would be smaller. A new Title would be less of a Topic to talk about since half the People wouldn't be playing "Modern Warfare 3" but rather play MW2 some more or even MW1 because more People wouldn't bother to invest 60$ for what's in those Games. You can't trade in your used Copy of MW2 if the Store has difficulty reselling it because the Publisher has implemented Stuff to prevent that.
Imagine what it would be like if everyone had to buy mw3 with 60$, without trading in another Game? There wouldn't be as many Players around. Less People who'd buy a Sequel because they aren't willing to pump out that kind of Money for what little is new in the next Title, which will have Multiplayer Servers that may be Ghosttowns in a Year anyway. If you can't trade your Games in, People might as well play older Titles in Multiplayer because they're still there and may be better in some regards.
But seriously, what do i care? I want to play a Game and if i can get it cheaper, i may do so.
I buy the Game and that should be all i have to do to get the People who made the Game some Money.
If i buy a Game used and then have to go through Hoops, i may as well not bother.
The problem that I have withn it is availability, as they said in the article they don't restock new games and I dont know how many times I've come to gamestop a month later to pick up a game and it just usn't there new, so I in turn have to buy it used, I dont have many other stores available to buy games like walmart or best buy, and no car available to get to it, Also I don't have the space or internet connection to get downloadable titles. And it is really frustrating at times because sometimes you want the game new. They really need to keep restocking the game new after it comes out.
BULL. S***.
If they can charge 120 dollars for a game, and people will buy it for 120 dollars, they will damn well charge the 120 dollars. You know what would happen if they got a percentage of used game sales? They'd roll in it. Then make the next game, as they were going to anyway.
It really annoys me that game companies think their products aren't subject to the sale rules governing every other product. Automotive and clothes manufacturers don't care about this sort of thing, but gaming has just gotten itself into a spiral of DLC and pre-order bonuses and special editions and multiplayer codes, it's like a race to see how much money they can get out of their players before they start to wake up to themselves. I refuse to believe that game developers are continuously struggling on the edge of existence, oh, they need that extra dollar just to put food on the table.
What's more, even if it is a problem, which it isn't, if the retail prices were reasonable, I'm sure people would buy the game new. As it is, the larger franchises have their hype to keep the buyers buying, but even unknown and not necessarily cutting-edge games are shooting for the same price range, and I think it's ridiculous. So you end up with large games selling by the boatload regardless of their price, and smaller games overestimating their quality and losing customers.
Probably my most favourite point, I have quite a few gaming friends, and not a single one of us keeps all our games. But perhaps more intriguing, not a single one of us keeps the money from a used game sale very long; it goes almost straight in to buying new games. And that helps the industry, because if it didn't happen, I would probably buy 1 game a year, and maybe get one for Christmas and my birthday as well. So that's a pitiful three sales of games amongst a whole family. Good luck turning a profit out of that.
Last but not least, SKYRIM. A single player game that outlasts most multiplayer ones tenfold. Maybe if people thought about making their single player games interesting, people would buy them. 0_0
If they can charge 120 dollars for a game, and people will buy it for 120 dollars, they will damn well charge the 120 dollars. You know what would happen if they got a percentage of used game sales? They'd roll in it. Then make the next game, as they were going to anyway.
It really annoys me that game companies think their products aren't subject to the sale rules governing every other product. Automotive and clothes manufacturers don't care about this sort of thing, but gaming has just gotten itself into a spiral of DLC and pre-order bonuses and special editions and multiplayer codes, it's like a race to see how much money they can get out of their players before they start to wake up to themselves. I refuse to believe that game developers are continuously struggling on the edge of existence, oh, they need that extra dollar just to put food on the table.
What's more, even if it is a problem, which it isn't, if the retail prices were reasonable, I'm sure people would buy the game new. As it is, the larger franchises have their hype to keep the buyers buying, but even unknown and not necessarily cutting-edge games are shooting for the same price range, and I think it's ridiculous. So you end up with large games selling by the boatload regardless of their price, and smaller games overestimating their quality and losing customers.
Probably my most favourite point, I have quite a few gaming friends, and not a single one of us keeps all our games. But perhaps more intriguing, not a single one of us keeps the money from a used game sale very long; it goes almost straight in to buying new games. And that helps the industry, because if it didn't happen, I would probably buy 1 game a year, and maybe get one for Christmas and my birthday as well. So that's a pitiful three sales of games amongst a whole family. Good luck turning a profit out of that.
Last but not least, SKYRIM. A single player game that outlasts most multiplayer ones tenfold. Maybe if people thought about making their single player games interesting, people would buy them. 0_0
In a similar way, paying for someone's relative to go on a holiday for 5 weeks is the same as kidnapping them for an equal amount of time, provided they are returned at the end and the 'someone' doesn't know.Senare said:
- Apr 1, 2009
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Bupkis, bupkis I say. Games have always been priced very high compared to most media but they are also one of the most sought after forms of entertainment, there is a market for used movies and such but its much smaller, partly because its not hard to find a bluray movie for only 10 bucks and when a movie only costs 10 bucks you probably aren't going to get more then a dollar or two for it used from a store. But if you trade in a game after beating it shortly after it comes out then you could be looking at getting 30-40 bucks for that game and that is more then enough to justify selling it back, plus games are getting more and more expendable, back in the day if you didn't have the box or booklet for a game that would take 5-10 dollars off the trade in price but now, really the only thing you get with a game is a disk, you'r saves are linked to your system so the value of the game is only worth as much as the disk, it makes more sense to just trade in a game and if you really liked it to just buy it back later once it gets cheap.Grenge Di Origin said:
Protip: just make a game people don't want to sell, like bathesda has been telling you works just fine for them. I've never sold a game I own, because I don't buy games I want to play once.
While I am not of the belief this should happen Braben is right when he says if the publisher got a slice of the resale then the price of the new games would drop.
This isn't because they would be happy with a change in revenue, this is because it would cause a significant increase in their profits if they lowered the price of the new games.
Think about it like this, profit maximisation having the largest difference in cost of production to revenue gained from sales.
Cost is determined by invariable costs, building upkeep, staff contracts paid, advertising space already rented, and variable costs which apply per unit produced like packaging, labelling, server space and bandwidth etc. This typically means the more you produce the lower the average unit cost is since the invariable costs are more and more negated.
Revenue is determined by the amount of product sold and at what price the product is sold. However price determines the amount of product sold. If you raise your price too high you sell less and make less, if you lower the price too much, sure you sell more but each unit makes less revenue on its sale.
If you give the producer a slice of resale then there is an incentive to sell more (and thus get more second hand sales) which requires a price drop, since you increase revenue per unit sold (original sale + resale cut, which acts as 1.x multiplier.) without increasing costs, in fact average costs may drop due to economies of scale.
Its similar to how consoles get a slice of each game sale, thus they drop the price of the console themselves sometimes even subsidising the sales to recoup it from game sales later.
Again, I will have to restate, while what he said is economically true, that doesn't make it either a moral, legal or viable course of action. (why does the publishers or consumers wants superceed the resellers, and why should the reseller agree to this?)
Edit: additional, this isn't nearly as important as it might seem given that the future is almost certainly going to be digital distribution and not physical copies due in part to the significant average cost per unit reduction and increase in demand due to the convieniance. which balances out to mean more sales at the same price with lower costs.
This isn't because they would be happy with a change in revenue, this is because it would cause a significant increase in their profits if they lowered the price of the new games.
Think about it like this, profit maximisation having the largest difference in cost of production to revenue gained from sales.
Cost is determined by invariable costs, building upkeep, staff contracts paid, advertising space already rented, and variable costs which apply per unit produced like packaging, labelling, server space and bandwidth etc. This typically means the more you produce the lower the average unit cost is since the invariable costs are more and more negated.
Revenue is determined by the amount of product sold and at what price the product is sold. However price determines the amount of product sold. If you raise your price too high you sell less and make less, if you lower the price too much, sure you sell more but each unit makes less revenue on its sale.
If you give the producer a slice of resale then there is an incentive to sell more (and thus get more second hand sales) which requires a price drop, since you increase revenue per unit sold (original sale + resale cut, which acts as 1.x multiplier.) without increasing costs, in fact average costs may drop due to economies of scale.
Its similar to how consoles get a slice of each game sale, thus they drop the price of the console themselves sometimes even subsidising the sales to recoup it from game sales later.
Again, I will have to restate, while what he said is economically true, that doesn't make it either a moral, legal or viable course of action. (why does the publishers or consumers wants superceed the resellers, and why should the reseller agree to this?)
Edit: additional, this isn't nearly as important as it might seem given that the future is almost certainly going to be digital distribution and not physical copies due in part to the significant average cost per unit reduction and increase in demand due to the convieniance. which balances out to mean more sales at the same price with lower costs.
I don't know what magical world you live in, but where I live, new game prices are standardized across the board. Regardless of whether I go to Best Buy, Gamestop, London Drugs, Futureshop or any other store that sells 'em, new games are $60. Or more, depending on the game. Even ordering from Amazon.ca doesn't really save me any money. So consider yourself very lucky that you can get al your games for $40, because I can't unless it's a six month old game.TheKasp said:
My next gaming machine will most likely be a PC.Pandabearparade said: