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If a company goes under because people only bought their games used then I honestly think there must be a problem with their business model. Honestly though, I haven't shopped in GameStop for a while.

This is flawed logic and the reason why used games can't kill the industry. The number of used games available can never exceed the number of new games sold. If you sold so few new copies that you took a loss used games aren't the problem the product is. If a game is good, people won't be selling it back used (at least not for a few weeks) or maybe even until a sequel is coming.

The irony of your comic though is that Game Stop is already in the Digital business. They saw more growth in it last year than in used or new game sales.

This is a complete myth. Used games aren't killing the industry. They can't as a matter of course. Maybe they can cost the industry by not making it as much as it could have but at the end of the day used game sales have never stopped a publisher from making a profit (don't make me keep pulling out Bioshock).

To head it off at the pass, I hope no one is stupid enough to think DLC, which once meant "additional content," will continue to be truly "additional."

QFT

Machu I think hits the nail on the head. Publishers are boxing themselves into a self-perpetuating cycle, and have been for some time, in which they're slowly going to start killing themselves. Forbes produced an article a few months back arguing that DLC will be the death of the game's industry. I didn't completely agree with the guy but he raised some interesting questions. I'll see if I can find it. Day 1 DLC is a perfect example. ME2 marketed itself (quite successfully) to encourage new purchase. ME3 threw that model out the window.

Found It, however it is now apparent I did not remember this article correctly and its actually as critical of gamers in the ongoing DLC controversy as the companies.

Aye, trying to keep shareholders happy with unsustainable year on year record growth will kill the games industry, or make it make daft decesions in its desperate attempts to keep their trends growing.

Same things been happening with GW for a while. Shares seem to be the best and worst things that can happen to a company. Great for that initial cash boost, bad when folks are expecting dividends every year for .. well forever.

I somehow think Melissia has made a mistake with her point. The companies that have been mentioned so far are not developers - they are publishers. These guys take the games made and get them onto the shelves and ultimately want the cash return more than the devs ever would. And these are the guys making the biggest fuss. They get their money from big titles and big releases. The fact that they are not getting all their money's worth from all the sales of the game they publish, both new and used, is why we have near-pointless DLC, online passes and that stuff. They want ALL the money they can get their greedy mittens on. You don't hear much from the dev teams claiming that the used game market is killing them.

Personally I think that, as someone else pointed out on this thread, the used game market is the result of poorly made games. If you don't believe that, then do explain the constant patching of pretty much every game released within the last few years or the persistance of tacking a multiplayer option to a game that isn't a fullblown RPG, or perhaps the obession with DLC between £5-10 (or equivalent) that adds something new to the game. There wouldn't be much of a need for this game-changing DLC, patching or multiplayer necessity if most of these games that were mainly singleplayer games had good singleplayer campaigns. 10 hours long, great characters and story and game mechanics, and you will sell that game like cupcakes. But as of late game developers are getting lazy. They aren't making robust games like they used to. And thinking that tacking on a multiplayer to increase the lifespan of the game is a cheap idea. Things need to change and until they do, this problem will still be around.



*Shrug* that's my opinion on the matter. It may not be accurate but oh well, it's an opinion.

And so you're saying Oblivion is a poorly made game because people buy it used?

Or rather, ALL console games must suck.

If lots of people buy it used then there probably was a problem with it, otherwise they would have bought it new, yes?

Of course I know the other big factor for used games is pricing, which then brings up the issue of new games prices both on shelves and online.

Juvieus Kaine wrote:If lots of people buy it used then there probably was a problem with it, otherwise they would have bought it new, yes?

No, those two statements are not necessarily correlated together, and they are certainly not causally related.

If anything, if a lot of used copies of a game are moving it's because the game is good.

Manchu, I purchased From Ashes (The ME3 Day 1 DLC) from GameStop.

I don't know if other stores do this, but we have a wall of DLC/XBLA/PS3 DG cards. They never change prices, and they sell out a lot. So maybe Gamestop has a hand in the DLC market as well.

Great point!

And you won't find any of it in the used section.

Quick, let's all shed some more tears for the poor, poor publishers.

I agree. And we should all give even more money to EA.

After all, they are the leading innovator in creating more advanced techniques to milk you for all you're worth counter piracy and help keep themselves afloat in these troubling economic times.

Manchu wrote:To head it off at the pass, I hope no one is stupid enough to think DLC, which once meant "additional content," will continue to be truly "additional."

I rarely buy used, but I almost never buy at launch. I typically will wait till that $60 game is only $30 or less new. On rare occasions that I do buy it right off is either becuase it is something I want to make sure to support voraciously, like Shadow of the Colossus or The Last Guardian, or something to play with my friends, like Diablo III or Borderlands 2.

KingCracker wrote:I dont hear car companies complaining that the used car market is killing their business. They made their profits selling it the first time, they dont give 2 gaks about it after wards. Im with Lordofhats on this one, any game company that is using this as an excuse are fething idiots.

Automobiles are a physical commodity. The engine runs, the systems function, etc. Over time, there is mechanical wear-and-tear. Thus, the price depreciates significantly the moment you even buy the car. A car with low mileage is greatly sought-after.

Videogames are on a digital disc. The wear-and-tear is negligible. For all intents and purposes, the functionality of a new game and a used game are essentially identical.

The analogue to the used car industry is a fallacious one.

Hyd wrote:

Absolutionis wrote:If you lower the price of new games, you lower the price of the secondary market and thus increasing sales to both yourself and the secondary market. The only result is that you move more product and likely end up with the same profits and the same problem. The solution being proposed here is to eliminate or deminish the secondary market in order to lower the 'new' price.

The point of lowering the price would be to move the item up the demand curve. Of course it reflects on the secondary market, but new games would be more attractive and as a side-effect second-hand dealers would be subject to downward pressure to some extent.

You move the item up the demand curve in the secondary market as well. Used games will still be cheaper and a more attractive option.

Hyd wrote:What I don't get is why the used games market should be the one to change or be impacted when they have done nothing wrong in the first place. There is a demand for used games, and they are here to fulfill it. Period. Maybe video games are not viable in their old format and producers just need to adapt, which they have began to do.

Juvieus Kaine wrote:If lots of people buy it used then there probably was a problem with it, otherwise they would have bought it new, yes?

Lots of people buy games used because the "problem" with it is that it's not multiplayer. Many games nowadays are having tacked-on multiplayer.

Manchu wrote:If anything, if a lot of used copies of a game are moving it's because the game is good.

And developers are given no incentive to make their game good as a result. They don't see any of the money that their effort brings. Thus, their biggest incentive is to increase day-one sales by making sequels to games... preferably with tons of multiplayer and day-one DLC.

Nice graphic, Ahtman.

I buy almost everything I get at launch. I can't remember ever buying a used game. I have even bought "GOTY"-type editions of the same game on the other console. (Example: bought FO3 at launch for PS3; bought GOTY FO3 for 360.) The only exception is shooters. Shooters are way to short and unreliably enjoyable for me to buy at launch prices. Generally, I want publishers to make money on RPGs so I'm down shelling out $60 on ME3 and certainly for Skyrim.

It goes without saying that I don't mind paying full price for Nintendo games like Skyward Sword, whose new copy prices don't seem too affected by the high used copy prices. And isn't Nintendo that spoke strongly against the recent trends in DLC? Hmm ... could it be that the DLC-to-complete model is the problem rather than used games?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Absolutionis wrote:

Manchu wrote:If anything, if a lot of used copies of a game are moving it's because the game is good.

And developers are given no incentive to make their game good as a result. They don't see any of the money that their effort brings. Thus, their biggest incentive is to increase day-one sales by making sequels to games... preferably with tons of multiplayer and day-one DLC.

No, D1DLC is not the necessary course of action. And any form of DLC doesn't solve the problem of low incentive to create original franchises. And the used game market is hardly the biggest obstacle to what is already the giant risk of developing a new franchise.

Why consumers feel the need to blame themselves for the profit-motive of corporations is truly astonishing. It's some kind of Stockholm Syndrome.

Day 1 DLC is kind of a loaded topic.

In some games, if they make it only available to the Collector's Editions or those who preordered--it can cause a large backlash. Look at "From the Ashes", or any BioWare D1DLC for example. Whenever it's come out that Collector's Editions will have access to a special character first--it gets blown up as this big huge thing where BioWare eventually caves and releases it at launch.

Another example? Look at Gears of War 3's recent "Forces of Nature" DLC. It included new maps, some new gun skins, and some "new" characters.
Those new characters, however? They're just reskins of the Preorder Bonus characters. As in Epic purposely went out and reskinned those preorder bonus characters and made them as part of the content some months later.

Admittedly--the Gears example isn't as bad in my opinion because we're on the fourth or so DLC pack(I THINK) and it's still being a free download to those of us who purchased the Season Pass...with a few more still to come.

Absolutionis wrote:
Videogames are on a digital disc. The wear-and-tear is negligible. For all intents and purposes, the functionality of a new game and a used game are essentially identical.

Wrong.
Back when I was stupid enough to buy physical games, I'd say about 10% of the disks didn't work out of the box and essentially had to be thrown away and marked down as a lost purchase, and about 60% were unusable after a year or so. CDs are one of the worst and most unreliable storage devices ever conceived.

Kanluwen wrote:Whenever it's come out that Collector's Editions will have access to a special character first--it gets blown up as this big huge thing where BioWare eventually caves and releases it at launch.

Wait you think that EA creating demand for a product by marketing it as limited and then turning around to sell it to everyone experiencing the demand is an example of "caving"?

You are truly pure of heart. Don't ever change, my friend.

Manchu wrote:Automatically Appended Next Post:

Absolutionis wrote:

Manchu wrote:If anything, if a lot of used copies of a game are moving it's because the game is good.

And developers are given no incentive to make their game good as a result. They don't see any of the money that their effort brings. Thus, their biggest incentive is to increase day-one sales by making sequels to games... preferably with tons of multiplayer and day-one DLC.

No, D1DLC is not the necessary course of action. And any form of DLC doesn't solve the problem of low incentive to create original franchises. And the used game market is hardly the biggest obstacle to what is already the giant risk of developing a new franchise.

That's what multiplayer is for. Don't cherry-pick.

Manchu wrote:Why consumers feel the need to blame themselves for the profit-motive of corporations is truly astonishing. It's some kind of Stockholm Syndrome.

Many things are astonishing if you're unwilling to see the other side. Gamestop is also a corporation.

Joey wrote:

Absolutionis wrote:
Videogames are on a digital disc. The wear-and-tear is negligible. For all intents and purposes, the functionality of a new game and a used game are essentially identical.

Wrong.
Back when I was stupid enough to buy physical games, I'd say about 10% of the disks didn't work out of the box and essentially had to be thrown away and marked down as a lost purchase, and about 60% were unusable after a year or so. CDs are one of the worst and most unreliable storage devices ever conceived.

Gamestop, Play & Trade, and every other secondary company out here gives you a guarantee if your disc doesn't work. Your argument is invalid. If there's anything these companies are good at, it's placing a guarantee that their game works.
As an aside, BluRay is also used nowadays; it's rather resilient to scratches.

To even compare the used game business to the gamble that is the used car business is showing complete ignorance on your part.

Absolutionis wrote:

Manchu wrote:Automatically Appended Next Post:

Absolutionis wrote:

Manchu wrote:If anything, if a lot of used copies of a game are moving it's because the game is good.

And developers are given no incentive to make their game good as a result. They don't see any of the money that their effort brings. Thus, their biggest incentive is to increase day-one sales by making sequels to games... preferably with tons of multiplayer and day-one DLC.

No, D1DLC is not the necessary course of action. And any form of DLC doesn't solve the problem of low incentive to create original franchises. And the used game market is hardly the biggest obstacle to what is already the giant risk of developing a new franchise.

That's what multiplayer is for. Don't cherry-pick.

Manchu wrote:Why consumers feel the need to blame themselves for the profit-motive of corporations is truly astonishing. It's some kind of Stockholm Syndrome.

Many things are astonishing if you're unwilling to see the other side. Gamestop is also a corporation.

Joey wrote:

Absolutionis wrote:
Videogames are on a digital disc. The wear-and-tear is negligible. For all intents and purposes, the functionality of a new game and a used game are essentially identical.

Wrong.
Back when I was stupid enough to buy physical games, I'd say about 10% of the disks didn't work out of the box and essentially had to be thrown away and marked down as a lost purchase, and about 60% were unusable after a year or so. CDs are one of the worst and most unreliable storage devices ever conceived.

Gamestop, Play & Trade, and every other secondary company out here gives you a guarantee if your disc doesn't work. Your argument is invalid. If there's anything these companies are good at, it's placing a guarantee that their game works.
As an aside, BluRay is also used nowadays; it's rather resilient to scratches.

To even compare the used game business to the gamble that is the used car business is showing complete ignorance on your part.

I haven't heard of Gamestop or Play & Trade, I'm also not spending £5 on a bus ticket to return a game that cost me £20. The bad ones were all from the large chain stores anyway.

Manchu wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Whenever it's come out that Collector's Editions will have access to a special character first--it gets blown up as this big huge thing where BioWare eventually caves and releases it at launch.

Wait you think that EA creating demand for a product by marketing it as limited and then turning around to sell it to everyone experiencing the demand is an example of "caving"?

You are truly pure of heart. Don't ever change, my friend.

No, I think that them saying "This will be available later for everyone who did not buy a Collector's Edition" and then turning around to sell it to everyone after people complained that they would have to wait is an example of caving.

Having it free as a perk of buying the collector's edition is not a bad thing. Having it be available later for people who buy the collector's edition is not a bad thing either.

Absolutionis wrote:That's what multiplayer is for. Don't cherry-pick.

I didn't.

Many things are astonishing if you're unwilling to see the other side. Gamestop is also a corporation.

So what you're saying is that I'm taking one corporation's side over another corporation? This just confirms my Stockholm Syndrome theory. No, I'm actually not making a choice between hostage-takers. I'm talking about the interests of consumers rather than corporations. Gamestop is only successful because consumers are also generally self-interested.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kanluwen wrote:Having it free as a perk of buying the collector's edition is not a bad thing. Having it be available later for people who buy the collector's edition is not a bad thing either.

And doing both is the best of all! Ka-ching!

The Foot wrote: If a company goes under because people only bought their games used ......

Where are they going to get their used games? Someone has to buy it new to be able to sell it as used.

The people who pay $60 for a game are the people who are willing to pay $60 for that game, supply and demand will eventually drive the price of that game down to where more people will buy it. Eventually the game is selling for $10 (or some other bargain bin price) and then you have maximized your profit, assuming you do that. The only thing that can impact that, is if you don't drop prices as fast as you need to, your competitors will undercut you and decrease your profits. That's what is happening here. The used game companies, like Game Stop, are competitors. What I don't understand is why are the game distributors even selling new games to Game Stop, since they are a competitor.

And, for those that say that it's not competition, it is. Game Company A makes a game that they will sell for $60 per title and reasonably expect to sell 1 million copies. Let's say they spend $30 million to make the game and get it on the shelves. That means their cost for the game is $30. They sell a million games that first couple months and now those games start hitting the Used Game Store B's shelves. Used Game Store B buys the games back at $40 and sells the games for $55 while the Retail stores are still selling the game at $60. (Pretty typical pricing). Now, Game Company A's cost per user is $30, Used Game Store B's cost is $40 per user. If you are Game Company A and want to run Used Game Store B out of this business, lower the price of your product. (You know it's time to do this when Used Game Store B actually has sufficient quantity of your game to fulfill demand) Since there is $30 of profit (between you and the retail store) and only $15 in Used Game Store B's profit, then you can lower your price $5 and force your competitor to either lower his price or lose sales (who buys the game used for the same price as new?). Now, that won't take $5 of profit away from Used Game Store B, because they will just pay less for the game, but they have to pay enough to get people to sell them the game, so they probably pay $37 for the game instead of $40 and they can sell it for at most $50 used, so their profit just went down to #13 instead of $15.

Now there are some who will pay $55 for a new game, who wouldn't pay $60 and so you pick up some customers, and your competitor probably does as well, but not as many as you do, because those that want the game because of the initial hype have already bought it at either $55 used or $60 new, the next good price point for a used game is going to be below the $50 mark, probably closer to $40 based on current behavior. This is the sweet-spot for you, since you have re-couped your initial investment and now you are just bringing in profit. Sell here until you see the used market for your game picking up (supply meeting demand), then you lower prices again. Once you get down around the $45 price point you are going to have to accept a lean year for your product, supply of used is going to exceed demand and very few will buy your game. Wait a year (or at least 6 months) and then drop to $30 and keep going down as low as you want. At this point, you are picking up customers that probably didn't have the hardware to handle your game when it came out and kids buying games for their dad as presents. Don't snicker at that market, my nephew gave me a copy of Halo when it hit the $20 price point. He didn't know I had beat the game a year and a half before!

$60 for a game, 6 months after it came out, is only justified if the game is something a gamer would keep for 6 months. If enough of them start selling it back, it's because it really wasn't worth $60 and the price needs to drop. This is the way supply and demand works. What other industry gives you such a great way to measure your price? Game Company A should be thanking the used market for helping them make a better product and set an appropriate price point on this game.

Tye_Informer wrote:Where are they going to get their used games? Someone has to buy it new to be able to sell it as used.

Let's say that EA needs to sell X million copies of ME2, potentially to X million unique consumers, in order to pay BioWare to develop ME3. Of those consumers, let's say that half aren't willing to buy the game at launch but are willing to buy the game used. Gamestop helps those consumers to easily get the used games, completely cutting EA off from making money from as many as one half of those X million copies. In that case, EA cannot pay BioWare to make ME3 and we, the fans, don't get our precious ME3! Oh noes!

That's the story that EA wants to sell you. Fortunately, while it is hypothetically accurate at a level that makes sense to most consumers who don't think about it for very long, it doesn't actually reflect reality. How can I prove it? Go to GameStop and ask if they have any new copies of ME3. Of course, for all those who are buying into EA's story, I suppose the only reason we have ME3 is because of all the ME2 DLC. Face front, true believer!

What I don't understand is why are the game distributors even selling new games to Game Stop, since they are a competitor.

That is a puzzle, isn't it? Almost seems to suggest that things aren't quite as simple as the narrative above.

While Game Stop is a competitor; they're also one of the biggest chains out there.

They operate from smaller shops than big name chains like Best Buy or Wal-Mart that sell video games--and thus have spread like a pestilence across the landscape.

I don't get the hostility. The only thing inconvenient about having so many GameStop's around is that sometimes you forget if you pre-ordered your copy of Super Soldier Man 2345 II from the one on this side of the street or the one on that side of the street. EA cares not from whence the cash flows.

The only thing inconvenient about having GameStops around is you have GameStops around, with all the shady business dealings they have going on. Gamestop throws their weight around like nobody's business--and it can afford to, since given their spread they make up a rather large portion of sales for some companies.

Gamestop is the only retailer which can force "their" exclusive preorder content to remain exclusive or they refuse to stock the game.

On whose behalf are you speaking when you say that's what's bad about having GameStop around?

My own, obviously?

I understand plenty of people love Gamestop, but since I had them mess up not one but THREE preorders (all placed online for store pick-up) it became clear that I'm better off using Amazon or Best Buy.

How did they mess up? Do they not make it right after the mess up?

But that's not what you said. You said that GameStops were bad because of "shady business dealings." Presumably, you then gave examples: "Gamestop throws their weight around like nobody's business" and "Gamestop is the only retailer which can force "their" exclusive preorder content to remain exclusive or they refuse to stock the game." But unless you're a publisher, none of those things actually harms you.

Now you say that GameStop messed up some of your pre-orders. Can you explain how that's related to their "shady business dealings"? I mean, my guess is that you pre-ordered through GameStop because you wanted the bonus exclusive to doing business with them. But that is neither an example of GameStop doing shady business nor an example of how the proliferation of GameStops harms you.

So, I'm a little confused both by your claims and your claim that these claims affect you.

Hahaha, no.

I had preordered three games(Age of Conan's collector's edition as a present for my father, Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, and the original Mass Effect).

Each time, when push came to shove they kept saying that "Oh, your order shipped so check with your local store".

Each time, my local store had no record of ever receiving anything.

Each time, Game Stop then claimed that I did not "properly fill out the notification forms for shipments".

Bear in mind that those games all had a biiiiiiiiiig difference in timeframes for releases. Each time I only preordered via Game Stop because they had something unique which also affected the gameplay in such a way that it was dumb not to preorder through them.