Used Game Sales Hurting Publishers?
Does the purchase of used games hurt the gaming industry ? Ask yourself that question, and perhaps five of your friends — you will more than likely get a mixed bag of answers. David Breban, a British programmer behind the open ended space-trading game ’Elite’ seems to think used games sales do in fact bugger the industry.
Braben’s reasoning behind his view adds a new twist when answering the question at hand :
"The shops are not giving us a way of distinguishing between pre-owned and new. So the shops are essentially defrauding the industry... We’ve got a lot of retailers eating our lunch and refusing to sell full-priced games. I’ve been in a shop where I’ve tried to buy a copy of a relatively recent game, and I’ve taken an empty box off the shelf and they’ve given me a pre-owned copy. That, I think, is disgraceful. Not holding stock of new games, substituting them with pre-owned games at the same or much the same price... That is really destroying the shelf-life of our games."
Most game shops we visit keep the ’pre-owned’ titles on a shelf clearly marked ’pre-owned’ or ’used’. If a retailer were to keep more ’used’ than ’new’ in stock, and this type of practice was widespread, then it would definitely be detrimental to the industry, to some degree.
Braben’s proposed solution to his dilemma is as follows :
"My argument is that for every game there are two versions. One is personal, not for resale and it’s made abundantly clear you can’t sell it. And it’s made available for something like GBP 25. And a resale and rental copy, which in film is actually about GBP 80."
Some people believe the reasoning behind the lowered availability of ‘new’ titles on the shelf is due to a number of apparent obvious factors, such as Digital Distribution. Digital distribution is becoming more and more popular by the day with companies jumping onboard with services such as Steam.
Quoting an employee of EB Games Canada we get the following response :
"There is nothing strange about the abundant availability of used titles in specialty stores such as EB, or other game shops. The specialty stores rely heavily on revenue from the sale of new releases or still popular titles. New or existing titles that sell in large numbers are going to be priority on the inventory control list when ordering stock, naturally.
The titles with large sales numbers generally do not render a very large return volume — used copies of big sellers are quite uncommon, equally however, titles with dropping or low sales numbers naturally show an increased volume of used copies. This is precisely where used titles can hurt the developers – if the title doesn’t come out of the game flaming, it’s going to be a small puff of steam with low numbers.
It all comes down to how receptive the target audience of the title is. If the title is good and attracts a lot of buyers, the buyers tend to buy new only — and if new is not available, they will wait until it is available through order, another store, order online, or go to Steam to get it if its available there."
Take it as you will, however, it appears that the sale of ‘used’ titles does actually hurt the industry - when it comes to stale titles or titles with low sales numbers out of the gate. One has to consider the flip-side though, if used game sales are hurting the industry — then digital distribution is hurting the retailers just as well — food for thought.
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PC DRM = no second hand sales
Maybe if they made games that actually took longer than a week to complete, people wouldn't sell them???
Most games these days are so short, linear, repetitive and boring that after a few weeks you just throw them on the shelf and never play them again.
Bring back games like Baldur's Gate, Star Craft and Total Annihilation ... games which you will actually play for months (heaven forbid!) and after a year or two, actually go back and play all over again because they were so good, or because they offer the flexibility to try a different approach.
If only we were so lucky ...
Flakes, that should read
PC DRM = No 1st hand sales.
I Agree with MKeeper though, the number of game that take 8hours or less to complete must make up 98.9% of the market.
Got to agree with MKeeper, I've played way to many 8hour or less games recently.
But also, if the prices wer more affordable, then people wouldn't think "Hey I can trade this in and get some of my money back", as well, if games wer say £20 each brand new, people wouldn't download as much as its a more reasonable price. I know what people will be thinking now and yeah, companies say they have high prices to try to recoup some money lost to piracy, but if they lowered the price then more people would spend the money than feel like they'll download the game. Another thing to cut the cost of would be the company wages! I personally was doing a computer games programming degree and programmers can get like £50,000 a year or higher! Yeah we all want to make loads of money but hang on, these people get paid over the top, which increases production costs, which then gets passed onto the consumer! This goes for everything as well, the worst offender is footballers!
Anyways though, back to the point. Lower the cost of new games, less people will feel the need to try to get back some of their money. I've never sold a game on that I've bought, but then I very, very rarely spend over £25-30 for a game.
And as a side note, how many people have actually completed Total Annihilation!?! I always get stuck on one level or something lol, but it is a brilliant game, and it still is!
i have to agree with the 3 guys above me, and say that new games that can hold you in front of the monitor for tens of hours are needed. what about the nerve on those guys from stardock with their non-protected Galactic Civilizations 2? i played it for free, then i bought the game because it deserved it. then the add-ons. remember the 90's? in western europe piracy was around 70%, not to mention eastern europe, or most of asia
). but the industry kept making money, more and more and more! and now they're complaining about the sales. this is what is happening when the gamers are nothing but buyers.....
Why is it that software publishes should think they are special.New car dealers could say second hand car sales affect their industry and they probably do. But if you have no further use or you wish to update either your car or software then that is your right as a consumer.
Of course if you keep a copy and sell the original that would be wrong.
I still have my boxed copy of Elite 25 years later