Used Game Sales "Killing" Single Player Titles

[Chairman Miaow]

In before someone denounces this as some greedy fascist corporate statement bluh bluh industry bad bluh bluh consumers are always right bluh.

EDIT: Never mind. Got ninja'd on that one.

While single-player only games are far from dead (Alan Wake for instance), he is probably right that they tend to make up more of the pre-owned market. You're more likely to give a game up if there's nothing to do once the story is done, especially if it's one you don't feel like experiencing again. People may complain about tacked-on multiplayer modes, but in the end, those same multiplayer modes are probably a calculated decision made to try and retain as many consumers as possible.

The whole thing regarding book swaps and yard sales isn't really analogous. From my limited knowledge, movies make their money on the silver screen (mostly) and from DVD sales (a only a little bit) from the fans who want home copies, so they're not really affected all that much by their rental industry. Books in the meantime seem to be doing better than ever, especially with the advent of e-publishing, and book publishers don't really have to compete with a "used book" market. The only thing vaguely similar are libraries, but those function in such a different way that the situation really isn't comparable. And (from what I've observed), book lovers tend to retain their products, even if they don't really care for them so much.

Because videogames make the bulk of their money in the first two weeks of sales, used game retailers have much more of an impact on the industry than their proponents are willing to let on. It's as if theater movies had to compete with their own rented DVDs. Would it kill the industry? Probably not, but it would have a measurable impact on the way movies were to be produced.

All my books are second hand, and I have a rather large collection.

 

[Grampy_bone]

Gamestop will go out of business and Used Game Sales will be something we tell our kids about, and they'll never believe us.

On the bright side, people may return to the PC in bulk if that happens. No incentive to stay on the console if the used market dies, especially with Steam around.

Steam is a really good example of games just plain costing too damn much. What happens every time steam has a sale? They drop the price 50% and sales go up like 1000%.

I also recall an indie dev complaining that his game on XBLA is never allowed to go on sale or have a price drop. Microsoft is too controlling. Any sales are better than no sales...

 

[Yopaz]

Protip: Don't sell games at sixty bucks, then.

Exactly. It could just as easily be said that if prices were lower there would be less incentive to buy used games.

Yeah, if new games were cheaper than used why would anyone buy used? Hint: cheaper new games would result in cheaper used games.

 

[viranimus]

"Prices would have come down long ago if the industry was getting a share of the resells," Braben stated.

I am sure that I am not the only one in 3 pages worth of posts to say this, but let me make this clear.

This is not bullshit. This is an absolute LIE. There is absolutely NO way ever that the prices of games are going to go down. Period. End of story.

If you willingly paid 60$ for a game today, and you remove the used market, your still going to be paying 60$ tomorrow, next year, and onward until the price goes UP, not down, because the market dictates it will NEVER go down because the consumers have proven they will bear that cost.

Hell, look at DLC if you need proof to this fact. DLC is used proof. How many times excluding steam do you see ANY retailer be it XBL, PSN, or other DLC platform do you EVER see the price of DLC reduced? Thats right, excluding steam you dont.(steam gets this exclusion because they are smart enough to know that their ability to act contrary to pricing guidelines is the predominant factor of their successes and are unwilling to jeopardize that.) That is the model you would create if the Used market was somehow undone. You would see 10+ year old games still selling for 30$ because there is nothing to drive the price down in that model other than over saturation. That is the quickest way to create industry wide stagnation that would result in another 1982 esque game market crash.

The used market is the best thing for the industry and these people who try to play as victims are absolutely lying to you.

 

[scotth266]

You're more likely to give a game up if there's nothing to do once the story is done, especially if it's one you don't feel like experiencing again.

I own plenty of compelling single player games I've played more than once. Those that stuck with series like Mass Effect until the end weren't doing it because of multiplayer either.

That's not the point I was making. Whether or not a game is "good" is irrelevant here: because even though you kept Mass Effect, there were other people who resold it.

Adding on multiplayer modes is a way for the developer to try and keep people from reselling the game: it gives you something to do that's competition oriented, so you'll keep playing so long as you want to be the best at it. And you're less likely (theoretically) to resell it because you might want to play that with your friends whenever.

It's about adding value to tempt the consumer to keep the game. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

I don't think I've ever seen sales numbers for DVD and Blu-ray copies of movies (I'm not sure they're even widely available) but I doubt they're as meager as you imply compared to ticket sales.

Honestly, I don't know how big the gap is between the two: but my point is that movies have a period of "front time" where the big bucks are made that justify the title's creation. That's the period where it's in theaters: hence the reason people make a big deal about what a movie earns in the opening weekend. Videogames have a similar front time: their first two weeks, for the most part, are where the majority of your "gotta pay off the budget" cash is made (though this has been varying a bit with the dawn of Steam's sale bonanza: you can sometimes make more from deals after release than you did during the full-price release, especially if you didn't have a lot of publicity at the start).

Regardless, used markets for DVD's and books are common. I can regularly go to the flea market every week and buy plenty of both, including an excellent selection of current titles not to mention that there are several brick and mortar stores dealing significantly, and even exclusively, in used sales of either in my area and I do not live in a huge city. The two are directly analogous to used game sales, and the real irony is you used book publishers success moving into the digital distribution realm in an attempt to show how it isn't analogous to games, despite games already moving that way and platforms like Steam seeing the sort of revenue growth that most companies don't even dream of because growth that high almost never happens. If anything games are even better suited to digital distribution than books and movies.

Except digital distribution lies directly in conflict with the used book/game industry. If you buy an E-book/steam game, the only way you can give it to someone else right now is to hand them your Kindle/computer.

Meanwhile, physical copies can be traded as many times as you want. See the difference?

 

[Woodsey]

Don't produce shit and charge extortionate prices for it then. I'm not exactly pro-used market, but you can't blame people.

Console game prices are ridiculous - and some of them have the cheek to try and pump PC game prices up to the same point.

And why do PC games cost 60 Euros now? There is no resale market on them.

That is pure greed especially considering publishers pay ~$10 royalties for publishing every console game. Notice that the only companies that are doing $60 games are EA/Bioware, Blizzard/Activision, Ubisoft, and "Horse Armor" Bethesda.

Then again, I can't really think of any more large publishers who actually develop for the PC. Apart from Valve, but Portal 2 was £30 (35?) on release day as well.

Practically all of them. And £30 is the normal price point for a PC game.

 

[drthmik]

This is a bunch of Bullshit
With 10 seconds of searching on Google I found an antique Tiffany engagement ring on sale (used) for $12,000.
http://www.etsy.com/listing/94091973/antique-diamond-engagement-ring-101?utm_source=googleproduct&utm_medium=syndication&utm_campaign=GPS
Tiffany&Co, who still makes and sells engagement rings
http://www.tiffany.com/Engagement/Browse.aspx?mcat=148203
will make NO MONEY off of the sale of that used ring!

NONE
ZIP
ZERO
NADA
ZILTCH
they don't get a penny
Yet I don't hear them complaining like whiny little bitches about that because they DID make money when they sold it the first time in 1925!

and they have a handicap that game makers don't have!
when Tiffany&Co makes an engagement ring they have 1 and only 1 ring to sell which they can sell once to one person who can then do anything he/she wants with it and they have no say whatsoever about it anymore.
when a gaming company makes a game they can sell that game over 40,000,000,000,000,000 times without having to make the game again!

Yet they have the Gaul to complain?

Have they no shame?

Have they no BRAINS?

They are nothing but Pathetic losers

 

[Baresark]

snip

snip

The main point of what I was saying was simply that the retail stores such as gamestop have not changed their business model in a really long time, but it's only this generation that this business model has become a problem. I'm not saying that if they can't change with the times we should make exception for them. The people who can't change with the time is not actually the game stores, it's actually the publishers which are struggling with the changes that time brings.

But the cost of games development has risen, pre-owned sales were never a cool thing, but now their something that can't be ignored.

And for the record gaming retail shops have changed greatly over the last 25 years, with less and less of the shop being for new titles, and more towards trade ins.

The cost of Triple-A titles has risen. Now we enter the realm of diminishing returns.

I'm not taking sides on anything. I don't want to make it seem like it is. The reason why there is so much space devoted to resale is simply because they have massive amounts of games stretching back to the beginning of the of this console generation. Which also constitutes games they have taken in, given credit to customers for, and not been able to unload yet.

The truth is that selling games for less appeals to the consumer. As does the prospect of trading in games that you no longer play so you can get a new game that you have not played yet. I have seldom had a problem finding a new game in the Gamestop's near me. And if I can't find it new, it's also hard to find it used, in my experience. I don't pretend to know exactly what is going on within the industry, but until this console generation it was ok to purchase games used. All I'm saying is that what is said in this article is bullshit. Used games aren't making the cost of games high, lack of demand for publishers Triple A titles is what makes them high. It is just excuse after excuse after excuse. The only excuse is that big publishers are failing to make games that are adequate for $60 and product that gamers finish and throw back as fast as they can. I'm not referring to game stores as the Robin Hood's of the games industry. I'm simply saying that publishers are failing to provide more than a throw away product for too much money. That isn't the fault of used games.

 

[F'Angus]

Well if games were cheaper then I'd be much less likely to buy the game second hand.

But aren't they making enough money from selling us half-made games and then charging £30 extra for the tonnes of DLC that should've been included originally.

 

[Rodrigo Girao]

Braben said that having a game sell out the first day is not a good thing anymore. "The idea of a game selling out used to be a good thing, but nowadays, those people who buy it on day one may well finish it and return it," he said. "People will say 'Oh well, I paid all this money and it's mine to do with as I will', but the problem is that's what's keeping the retail price up.

It's an egg-or-chicken problem, then: if they made it cheaper in the first place, there would be less reason to resell it.

Say, I pay $15 for a game. It's not a lot of money, so I might as well keep it, why not.

Say, I pay $60 for a game. It's quite some money, so after I beat it, unless it's absolutely awesome, I better sell it and recoup some of it.

 

[Micalas]

Edit: It all has to do with loss aversion. The publishers get money for their games, so they take any money they don't get that they feel they deserve as loss, which is not explicitly true. It's easier to trade in used games because people who think of things like "traders" think of things, do not experience the loss aversion (that is why getting less for a game than what you payed is ok). They also largely ignore bringing up the sales of the Walmart's of the world because the there is a greater emotional reaction to loss than there is to gains. To illustrate on a scale that is easy: Imagine you have no money. Someone gives you $10, you are happy about it. We'll say that increases your overall utility by 10 points (to keep it simple). Now, imagine if someone then steals that $10. While it seems like you simply lost 10 points of utility and you are simply back to where you started, you have an emotional reaction to that which makes it seem like you are put into a negative utility position. So, now instead of having 0 points of utility, you have -5 points of utility. While it's not true, the reaction is much worse at the loss than it is at the gain.

I'm glad there are other people that understand loss aversion. It's not a "lost sale" it's a "sale you likely wouldn't have gotten anyway."

I have an idea, video game industry. Put your money where your mouth is. Let's implement something that makes games untradeable. In exchange, you drop the price of every new game to $30-$40.

 

[walsfeo]

I'm really tired of the "used sales killing games" BS. These guys need to do something about it instead of bitching and moaning. It can't be all that tough.

Possible fix? Slash the prices down and sell the "engine" for $20 with some content. Then they can offer big chunks of DLC off of that same working system.

 

[jhlip]

Oh bull, they would still keep it at 60 bucks now that it has been the standard price for so long.

 

[tendo82]

I suspect that with the next console generation we'll see the beginning of the end of used game sales. So I get his point, but it's a 2007 point not a 2012 one. Between now and 2014 we'll see a huge change in the way console games are purchased.

PC games aside, Sony's Vita made the first substantive move in that direction. Yes, you can buy the games in retail, but by putting the games on the same format as system's storage they're basically telling the consumer to just buy an sd card and download your games for five bucks less. Will I be shocked if they start releasing Vita games online first at some point? Not at all.

They'll also probably start shipping less physical media to Gamestop as well, forcing scarcity that will drive people online to download the game.

 

[Chris Mosher]

The one thing that the gaming industry never really addresses here that I think will shoot them in the foot is what happens with the store credit customers get from thier trade ins. I spend my credit on new $60 games. I use my trade in credit to buy more games. Guess what happens if the market for used games disappears? I stop buying one $60 dollar game a month and the sales of new games drop. I am sure that I am not the only person who does this. I really want the games industry to address what happens to overall sales. Well I am off to trade in Mass Effect Three, may be I should just use it to pick up Game of Thrones or a season of Justifed.

 

[RandV80]

Like the article says it's a tough situation with no real good answer. The only thing I ever bother to point out in these discussions though that there's a clear difference between the video game industries and others, such as book or vehicle, in that with pretty much everything else there's a clear separation between 'new' and 'used' retailers. If you want a new book, you walk into a bright open spaced Chapter's with rows of new shiny books all neatly organized and arranged. Want a used book, you go into the dingy little 'hole in the wall' used bookstore where everything is cramped and the covers are faded. Unlike video games you don't buy them in the exact same place, and you definitely don't have the new book seller trying to offer you a used copy to save yourself a few bucks right at the point of sale.

 

[Tipsy Giant]

You pick a bad business model, that's your fucking fault, don't blame the people paying for your product.
If the game was worth keeping it wouldn't really matter, look at skyrim. No online, single player, but most people who bought it still have their copy because.......*drum roll* ... They want to play it again!

Same reason people keep anything, book, wanna read it again, movie, wanna watch it again, pretty fucking simple!

Want to slow down used sales make a game people wanna revisit, otherwise you don't deserve the extra money!

 

[Senare]

I would love to see the retailer (read Game Stop, Wall Mart etc.) cut of the loop and thereby giving developers the same or more amount of money when selling a game at perhaps half the price of today's games.

What if games sold by digital distribution could be sold a lot cheaper than the standard price, but that publishers will not lower the price because the physical retailers would cry foul and stop selling their game in stores? And if a large part of the market buy games from stores then that could cripple or kill a developer.

Sadly I can only guess at these things because I can not find hard data on what cuts developers, publishers, retailers, marketing departments, licensing fees (think Nintendo taking a cut because you develop for their system) get out of the market price. I have only a few lectures and vague estimates to go on.

I want as much money as possible to go to the people who made the game possible and the development of better titles. And when I view things from that angle, buying used games is no different from piracy.

 

[Zenn3k]

Just like used book sales prevent peoples writing from getting published....oh wait...that isn't true at all.

Its all bullshit in order to make the maximum profit available at the cost of anything and everything else.

Not making enough money? Raise prices!
Still not making enough money? Must be the pirates! DRM!
STILL not making enough money? Blame used sales!

After all, the kid who can't afford $60 but can afford $30 must be the reason you didn't make that standard 6000% profit PER SALE.

Its all bullshit. Without having to compete with used games, new game prices would be $200 a game. Thats what EA and Activision WANT.

 

[antipunt]

Sure. And the price of new cars would have dropped if they got a slice of resale.

Oh wait, it wouldn't. Because shareholders would just consider it extra profit.

An agreeable statement. Besides, resolve the resale and they'll just shift back to piracy for things continuing as they are.

Nothing would change, they're just blowing smoke.

And if they couldn't blame piracy, they'd say its because of development costs.

I really wish people would just accept these game publishers are out to make as much money as possible, and will use any strawman they can in an attempt to "hide" it (not that it should really need hiding, but then who else would give all these PR guys jobs?)

Yeah, I kind of agree. Even though there may be a tiny shred of truth in it, 99% of it just sounds like whining/excuse making to me.

Its all bullshit. Without having to compete with used games, new game prices would be $200 a game. Thats what EA and Activision WANT.

That's a good point actually. What the hell makes us think they won't just take advantage of the monopoly?