Are used games killing the market?

[Bodhesatva]

So you are essentially arguing that the video game industry is super special and cannot be compared to any other industry. Even though virtually every other industry in the world can live harmoniously with a second hand market, video games are unique and cannot. That's possible, but I hope you'd agree that's very unlikely. Again, I posit that it's much more likely that the business model in gaming is just bad.

Here are some solutions:

1) Stop making games that cost so much to produce. Make only handheld and casual titles, then sell them for 20 dollars. Then just like Music/DVDs, the used sales wouldn't hurt so much because the price of new games is already so cheap.

2) Begin to unify around a single platform. Split platform sales increase costs even further.

3) Make games with more replay value. Stop making single player games, which can be returned very quickly. Games like Chess, Mario Kart, Halo or Super Smash Brothers are more often kept because people continue to replay them. This problem is compounded by the fact that many single player games are getting shorter, which further increases their chance of resale.

I'm sure I could come up with more solutions, but those are the first few off the top of my head.