Why is buying used games such a big deal nowadays?

[binary solo]

It's a manufactured crisis. If a game needs to sell 2 million to be profitable then it needs to be an good quality game with reasonably wide gamer appeal. The existence of a used game market doesn't have a big effect.

There was a suggestion that publisher revenue would go up by 18% if there were no used games. Think about that. How many studios that went out of business did so because they were only 18% away from viability? I would suggest none. If a game needs to sell 2 million to be acceptably profitable then with used games that 18% figure means to only need to convince about 2.35 million people to want to play it. But if only 1 million people want to play it eliminating used game sales isn't going to help you.

Also used game sales puts a game into more people's hands. If you're looking to establish a franchise then having a substantial number of people buy the first game used improves the chances of the second game in the franchise achieving sales growth, both in terms of launch window sales and lifetime sales.

I bet used game sales of Uncharted:DF helped to make Uncharted 2 a great success.

Do you think Insomniac would not be failing hard with Fuse if there was no used games? Fuse is going to be a money loser for Insomniac and EA because it's not a very good game and it only has limited appeal. It's failure can't be blamed on used games.

Can any game's failure to be profitable really be blamed on used games? I read David Cage say that Heavy Rain was less successful because of used game sales, but he didn't say it was a commercial failure, it wasn't.

If you consistently make good games you will profit year after year even with a thriving used game market.

If you are inconsistent in the quality of games you make you will have profitable years and unprofitable years even if there's no used game market.

I lose my faith in humanity when I see so many people swallowing the bullshit put put out by publishers and developers about how evil the used game market is. As if the trading in used goods is somehow unique to video games, and that the video game industry should somehow have special rights to prevent used product trading. It's bullshit.