Used Game Sales "Killing" Single Player Titles

[Hugga_Bear]

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.

This. Utter bollocks. I can maybe follow the reasoning of high risk for many games but that line was ridiculous.

I struggle to empathise with an industry in record growth with record sales and record returns. The industry has a flaw somewhere but attempting to punish gamers won't help anyone.

Besides, low budget games still turn a huge dime, graphics aren't the be all and end all, nor is the shooting star approach, try releasing innovative games with a focus on story and gameplay, people still play them and with relatively low dev costs the return should be nice. Besides they'll be smaller which means reasonable to download which means a virtual copy -> no returning to store.

 

[Fuhjem]

I still don't see why it's such a huge deal for game retailers to give publishers a small cut of used games profits. In return, there could be even more deals cut between the two, like a goddamn symbiosis.

 

[Baresark]

snip

um where they come from isn't really that important?
do you think oh that came from this awesome industry 100 years ago, so i should support it. No because thats retardeed, the thing is its what your asking people to do for this market.

Its retail, if they can't keep up with the times then they deserve closure, nature of capitalism.

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.

 

[Baresark]

So, tell me, why wasn't reselling games "killing the industry" back witht he NES and SEGA?

Because gamestop and giant used only retailers did not exist.
They only stock used games and maybe a few new games forcing people to buy used games even if they want to buy new.

..They do? When I worked in GAME, we stocked both new and old games (granted, this was five years ago), and I remember being able to buy re-used games back in 94'

It worked like this in the nes days

(not real sales numbers)
1:retailer purchases 1000 copies.
2:retailer sells all games stock.
3:buys another 1000 copies.
Rince and repeat until demand drops.

How it works today.
1:Gamestop buys 1000 copies.
2:Gamestop sells all copies.
3:Gamestop buys back almost all the new copies
4:Gamestop runs out of new copies and keeps selling the used copies.

They Kept those 1000 in circulation and when those sell out they refuse to buy any new copies so when you come in for a copy the only copies they have are used copies.

I think you are partially right. It's not the game stores that are refusing to buy new stock though. I have never gone to Gamestop and not been able to buy a copy of a game I wanted. The issues seems to be that games come back in so fast. Why would they restock a store when they have that item in stock.

 

[Grampy_bone]

I still believe that if they dropped the prices in half, sales would triple. 60$ is just too much to risk on a shit game, and there are so many shit games.

The publishers always whine about used sales stealing their profits but you rarely hear Gamestop talking about the minuscule margins on game sales. Gamestop makes 10 bucks on a new game, gross, and as soon as the price drops they sell it at a loss. If they didn't make money on used games they wouldn't be able to stay in business. When the Xbox360 came out, all new games went up to 60$, just because. The game industry is trying to milk more money out of the same consumers to make up for their shitty products.

With that said, I fully expect the next generation of consoles to have integrated DRM activation protocols, ala CD Keys like PC games, and that will simply be that. Gamestop will go out of business and Used Game Sales will be something we tell our kids about, and they'll never believe us.

 

[Pandabearparade]

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

That.

Sadly, agreeing with someone who said something perfectly already is a 'low content post', so I'll add that Greg Tito should still apologize to anyone who bought DA2 based upon his review.

 

[Pandabearparade]

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.

 

[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.