Shadow1980 said:
@Bolded. That's largely an issue just for online-only games. Just like digital downloads, online-only fundamentally changes the relationship between product and consumer. It used to be, and still is for most titles, that when you bought a game you bought it knowing you would be able to continue playing it indefinitely. I've been able to enjoy my NES games for nearly 30 years, and will be able to continue enjoying them for decades to come. Meanwhile, an online-only game has an artificially-imposed expiration date at some point in its life and it is utterly dependent on continued support from the publisher. Once they pull the plug on the game, that's it. Nobody gets to play it anymore, ever. One of these days, your Destiny disc will be a $60 coaster. It's for that reason why I refuse to support online-only games. I only buy games that have offline single-player, or support local multiplayer. I don't touch MMOs (I made an exception for Destiny because it was Bungie, and ultimately regretted it). @Italicized. I've heard that "GameStop is bad for the industry and will kill physical" for years. It doesn't hold water. I wrote an article about this four years ago, and my overall argument hasn't changed. Globally, GS made $2.2 billion in revenue and $1B in gross profit off of used game sales last year. Compared to the console market as a whole, that's not a massive chunk. GTAV alone has sold at least 80 million copies new and generated at least $3 billion in revenue. The used game market has existed for a long time, including at GameStop, and yet the console market has thrived and even grown. The industry has no room to plead poverty, especially when the top five games released in a given year generate more revenue than what GS makes in a given year off of used games. @Underlined. You can sometimes get good deals from digital, when they happen to offer good sales, but you can also find good deals with physical. Uncharted 4 can be bought new for $32 on Amazon and can be bought pre-owned from GameStop for $20, but still costs $40 on PSN. FFXV? $36.45 new at Amazon, $35 used at GS, still $50 on PSN. Nier Automata? $40 new at Amazon, $50 new and $45 used at GS... still $60 on PSN. Halo Wars 2? $35 new on Amazon, $38 used at GS, $40 on XBL Marketplace. Titanfall 2? $25 for PS4 & $20 for XBO at Amazon, $30/$27 used at GS, $40 on PSN and XBL. Most of the time, you can find a physical copy of a game several months after release for a good bit less than the regular price of a digital copy on the console's digital store. It's rare that the digital version costs less. Also, people made GameStop win. Dealing with a middle man is easier than selling it directly to a new owner yourself, be it eBay or a yard sale or whatever, but you pay a price for dealing with a middle man. They're going to take a cut of that value. While GameStop doesn't make much in terms of revenue off of used games, |
@Bolded part, if you own it physical/or digitally the day it gets the plug it will be death (see Halo 2) but for a game like Destiny it is worse because if you hardware ever gets broken you can not download the updates/extra content for destiny anymore and all you have is a vanilla 60 bucks game.
As a fan of watching retro gaming channels it is pretty well known that Nes/Snes games battery lives are finished for a lot of games sure it is nice to play a game like FF but if you can't save it can't be that fun anymore and most collectors put the game on the shelves and play the emulated version.
Well I didn't say Gamestop is bad for the industry but why should I give money to Gamestop instead to the Devs/publishers? In my personal opinion most deals on PSN were better than what retailers gave, Uncharted 4 was 20 Euro months ago on PSN; (you can find the sales history yourself: https://psprices.com/region-us/index)
People made Gamestop win
GameStop is set to close between at least 150 stores following fourth quarter sales declines in almost all of its segments.
