TrevHead said:
In my book buying nothing but used games is fine, but you lose any right to rant about how shitty modern games and the industry is, since they are responsible for it been the way things are.
You know, the gaming iondustry is seeing unprecedented profits overall, with an estimated double in profits by like 2016. Saying "used games are making the industry what it is" is utter bullshit. We can still buy good movies, good books, and good CDs with much less intrusion from the publishers.
How do you compete with used sales without resorting to online passes, DLC etc? The short answer is you can't as used will win out against new since it's always cheaper. That's why the most popular game store in my area only sells used games while traditional stores are always quiet.
Agai, how is the industry making so much damn money if used games always win out? The short answer is, they don't. Now, here's some real methods they could use, and they all operate along the same theme:
-Stop spending money to try and recoup used game sales. The publisher who have tried it admit it doesn't work. EA's not dropping online passes out of the goodness of their hearts, btw. They've found that those aren't making them money, either. The sales of OP games are down and the userbase is smaller for those games.
-Stop selling annual, disposable titles. The games that people want to keep tend to not have the same used game availability for some reason. Oh, and as a benefit, if people want a game, they're more likely to want to buy early. When it matters most.
-Stop gearing us for sales and the like. People are less likely to buy a game when thy think the price is going to drop in two months. And when you can get new, AAA games for 20 bucks that soon after launch, nobody's going to bother. That level of depreciation has nothing to do with used games, either. They've done nothing to make it worthwhile for companies to stock them (more on that in a bit).
-Stop packaging games that are incomplete. I know a lot of people point to DLC and say it's optional, and that's fine. But sometimes it's right on the disc, which means they built it in the same time frame with the same resources. Sometimes they label it as though the game is only complete with the DLC, and sometimes they even make it so a game can't be completed without DLC (AC2, before people pitched a fit). Sometimes, games are broken and they're asking for DLC money rather than fixing the base product.
And by a similar stretch, don't be surprised when people wait for GotY editions. We know they're coming. Hell, the only reason I got Skyrim before the GotY edition was because it came with my new 360. We know it's coming, and we know that if we wait, we'll pay a lot less for the full game. The status of games as needing an extra six months to a year to get all the content is kind of intolerable in a lot of cases.
And yes, I get it. My first game purchases were in the 80s, when people had to buy a whole new game for essentially bugfixes or new content. I bought new iterations of Street Fighter 2 for 60-70 apiece. I could better afford it back then, which is another issue for another time. The thing is, things have changed and the industry is making more money than ever before.
-stop complaining that the radical costs justify the added content. The more sensible approach would be to adopt modest costs in the first place.
-Stop trying to put one over on us. That includes lying about DLC and the like.
Basically:
-Stop treating us like the enemy.
And while we're on it:
The problem is that game stores makes next to nothing from new games, although they do get a much larger % from sports games which explains why game shops push them so much.
The alternative would be to give retailers a decent cut from new sales. Although I can't see publishers in atm able to cut into their own profits so the costs would have to be past onto gamers which I doubt they would be willing to pay extra. Plus would make used games even more attractive to the customer.
If used games are so horrible, wouldn't taking a little bit of the profit (still amazingly high, by the way) and applying it to game stores to incentivise them to not rely heavily on used games be a worthwhile investment? Hell, you said it yourself: the reason used games are so prevalent is that game stores make money on them, where they don't necessarily make money on new games. Why is the markup so low? Because the gaming industry rigged it that way. This has always been completely within their control. Complaining that they don't like used game sales but also complaining that they don't want to cut into their profits by making new games economically viable is a stupid move from a stupid industry that acts like it's trying to screw everyone over. Again, they are treating another group like the enemy. and it backfired. Gamestop is now so powerful they have to play Gollum towards it, simultaneously serving and cursing the object of their hate. They've literally built an empire in the opposition, and they're bitter that it's doing well.
The other way is for publishers to get a cut from used sales, but MS' system for that with the Xbon\ didn't go down too well.
Because that's crap and nobody should buy into it as a viable option.
