UPDATED!!! People like second hand games but software companies can't handle the cost.

[MikeRox]

Go for it, it's one that's been doing the rounds at a few places for a few months now.

To earlier posters: You might use your trade in credit to buy new games. But each used game sale, is a purchase from somebody who obviously wanted the game, but by buying second hand, the developer and publisher never got a cent for.

Even if you were able to buy 1 extra game as a result of trading in 1 game. That doesn't increase overall sales. Factor in that when used game sales were tracked, and some games had 5+ owners at some point in their life. You can soon see why it's an issue for the industry when the developers, and I can't stress this enough, get nothing at all for those sales.

It can lead to "flops" having massive cult followings and viable audiences, but because most of them bought pre owned rather than new, nobody can see that demand is there meaning a sequel that had everyone bought new would be been a no brainer, suddenly becoming a flop which has taken the studio with it/killed that franchise.

It's not just the likes of Factor 5 etc which were impacted by this. Tim Schaffer said the same in relation to titles such as Psychonauts. They were commercial failures, have had more than enough people play them had pre owned sales contributed to the developers to make the games successful.

I agree entirely with the "it's mine I should be able to sell it" but the model collapses when GameStop give you $20 for it, and sell it for $40 meaning they actually make more money from the pre-owned sale, than they did originally buying the new product from the wholesaler. That leads to them then pushing pre-owned sales on people who would actually have otherwise bought new.

There are no two ways of looking at it, pre-owned sales hurt new sales. This in turn hurts developers. It's not a myth, it's not a fallacy, it's a fact. The fact that you have purchased it and so are entitled to sell it is a completely different argument but for some reason regularly gets thrown into this debate of do used sales hurt new. Of course they do. Should you be able to sell your game? Absolutely.

So developers/publishers and retailers need to find a way that works for everyone. The online pass is currently the ugly solution to this. Personally I think GameStop etc should just chuck a percentage of pre owned sales to the developer/publisher and in return negotiate better wholesale rates on the titles.