Second hand trade hurts developers as much as software piracy...

[dunno001]

NJ5 said:
dunno001 let me stop you right there at the point you say a retailer gets $10 per game... that is much below every estimate that I've seen.

Regarding stolen games, I'm sure you've noticed that most game stores don't actually have the DVDs in the cases... so that's another misleading assumption.

Well, I can say that you didn't do a thorough reading of my post, then. Note how early in my post, I acknowledge that the numbers are for last-gen. However, the $10 margin on a $50 Wii game remains today. (The margin on a $60 HD game is $12, whereas a $40 PSP game is $8, a $30 DS game {or HD greatest hits} is $6, and a $20 greatest hit PS2 game is $4. All of these play into the 20% margin that I said was correct.) So sure, I can get $12 on those $60 games, but costs have also gone up for the retailer at this point. (Minimum wage now is $7.25, so payroll costs are greater, and mall rents have certainly gone up also.)

As for stolen games, yes, there are a lot of protections in place on games; I mentioned how hard it is to recover from a game that walks. This is why games on the shelf are either gutted (Gamestop), in hard plastic boxes with security devices (Best Buy), in locked glass cases (Wal-Mart), or even slips of paper (Toys R Us). But all of these have costs incurred with them also, which is something that I was factoring. At that point, you're having to spend more money to prevent lost money. It's an investment worth making, to be sure, but it is another investment, nonetheless. You'll note that I factored in the security cost as a limiter, not the actual theft cost. (Theft is a bitch to measure as a ratio, but if every game gets security, it's easier to calculate.

Also, as jammy mentioned, there still are other expenses. He mentioned insurance and maintenance, but there's still more, like signage, or, as Gamestop does on occasion, securing exclusives. And this list can keep going, I'm sure. The costs to running a business are dizzying.