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Forums - Gaming - Why is buying used games such a big deal nowadays?

richardhutnik said:
Michael-5 said:
dukerx2 said:
If you can't afford new games, find another hobby. In 10 years everything will be digital and the used game problem will be gone.

That might make games cheaper.....LOL

From what some of my friends tell me, Microsoft is trying to immitate Steam, and steam sells brand new games for dirt cheap. Old ones too, I remember when I bough Fallout NV Ultimate Edition for $30 on 360 (new), it was $5 on a Steam summer sale.

The problem is, Microsoft is immitating Steam poorly, and until they prove that they can mimic Steam on price, and make "summer sales" of their own, the One will have a lot of problems.

Major Nelson, in an interview with Angry Joe says Microsoft DOES match Steam with summer sales and other promo periods.  Apparently Microsoft believes they have the sale side covered.

LMFAO, yea wow. So Steam gets Alan Wake with DLC and American Nightmare for $5 and we still pay $20 for American Nightmare alone on 360. Fallout New Vegas Ultimate Edition sells for $5 on Steam, but it's still $35 for DLC on a XBL Summer Sale.....

Yea, okay. If that's the case, then my opinion towards to One has dropped significantly because even when I find a redeaming feature, it's flipped upside down.



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Michael-5 said:
richardhutnik said:
Michael-5 said:
dukerx2 said:
If you can't afford new games, find another hobby. In 10 years everything will be digital and the used game problem will be gone.

That might make games cheaper.....LOL

From what some of my friends tell me, Microsoft is trying to immitate Steam, and steam sells brand new games for dirt cheap. Old ones too, I remember when I bough Fallout NV Ultimate Edition for $30 on 360 (new), it was $5 on a Steam summer sale.

The problem is, Microsoft is immitating Steam poorly, and until they prove that they can mimic Steam on price, and make "summer sales" of their own, the One will have a lot of problems.

Major Nelson, in an interview with Angry Joe says Microsoft DOES match Steam with summer sales and other promo periods.  Apparently Microsoft believes they have the sale side covered.

LMFAO, yea wow. So Steam gets Alan Wake with DLC and American Nightmare for $5 and we still pay $20 for American Nightmare alone on 360. Fallout New Vegas Ultimate Edition sells for $5 on Steam, but it's still $35 for DLC on a XBL Summer Sale.....

Yea, okay. If that's the case, then my opinion towards to One has dropped significantly because even when I find a redeaming feature, it's flipped upside down.

Bubble baby!



What is a big deal, is the right of doing whatever I please to do with my retail game; and buying/selling used games is part of that.



The ability to trade in your games towards a new game is incredibly important to some people. Just the other day at Gamestop I was there for an hour and saw at least 10 people trade in games towards the Last of Us. That is the major benefit of used games, they promote the sale of new games. Me I like DLC so I buy used games so that I can afford to also purchase the DLC for a game.

For those of you out there who exclusively buy used and trade in games to purchase more used games and do not buy DLC. Then keep your opinions to yourself because you are the reason companies like EA came up with online passes and why MS believes DRM will work.



Michael-5 said:
Jay520 said:
Pemalite said:
Jay520 said:

The console cannot play those games. But you have no right to what the console is able to do.


Actually you do! You "own" the hardware, not license it.
You are free to jail-break it so that the system is able to do other things, like have Windows installed to play PC games much akin to what some people did with the origional Xbox, plenty of legal precedents have been set over that so it's not illegal or immoral.


Fine, you can jailbreak your system. But I thought it was fairly obvious that people were discussing the console's capability immediately after the purchase. None of us has a right to say what the console should or shouldn't be capable of when we first buy it. 

Yes, we kinda do. Called the Freedom of Speech. Microsoft can design a system which makes it difficult to trade games, which will still be playable on a different console/account, but you can do whatever you want to that console to make it play whatever games it's physically capable of playing.

For the same logic, it's not illegal to make your PC play 360/Wii/PS3 games. It's your computer, and as long as the game doesn't violate copyright protection, and you don't sell your 360/Wii/PS3 playing PC, then you're fine.

I do hope One gets pirated fast, that would be funny.



Ugghh, sure you can "say" whatever you want, and as I already said, you can jailbreak if if you want. But Microsoft can make the console in whatever way they please out of the box.

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Michael-5 said:
Darc Requiem said:
Michael-5 said:

I definatly did not see SNES games sell for $60, and I have most of the expensive ones. Chrono Trigger was $50, Earthbound was $50, Tetris was $40....No games on a Nintendo console sold for over $50 until the Wii U, it marked a first for $60 games. The only time a game cost above $50 prior to now on a Nintendo console was if it came with a peripheral like a Super Scope or Wii Fit Board.

The number of debunk studios now, is much less then that in the 80's. You know what happened in the 80's? Games were cheap to produce, so we saw a lot of companies make utter crap, and the consumer just stopped playing. Competition is what makes games better, and there a lot more studios now then ever before, so we need to weed some out. It's sad that major studios like THQ have gone bust, but just like 3DO we will forget about them.

Plus it's not the smaller studios which compain about the used game market, it's mostly EA and Microsoft, and they are on top. EA is just plain greedy with online passes and exclusive rights to NFL, Porsche, etc. If you don't put the pressure on them after they keep making crappy games, then they'll just build a monopoly, and that will drive more studios out of buisness.


Actually SNES and Genesis games with large cartridges often sold for more than $50. The SNES port of SF2 went for $69.99 or more, Phantasy Star IV for Genesis was even more expensive. I remember my brother and I having to rent PSIV because my mother would pay that much for a game. This brings up another point. 

While games have a higher budgets now, the physical production costs are far cheaper now. Cartridgers were $25 or more depending on their capacity. Discs are less than $1 each. Game launches were riskier proposition during the cartridge era. If a publisher ordered 500,000 cartridges and their game sold 100,000 copies, they'd be looking at a 10 million dollar loss. Game publishers are using used games to divert attention away from their mismanagement.

Like what SNES games in particular? I think Donkey Kong Country Competition, and Star Fox Weekend sold for $60 new, and I don't remember SF2 costing that much. Are you talking about the price of the game new, or used years later on eBay?

As for the market, you're 100% right, I forgot about the cost of cartridges.

IMO studios like EA have no right to complain about used games, especially when they block competition by having exclusive rights to NFL, Porsche and such. NFS games nowadays, are crap, and so are a lot of EA games. If you can't make a profit off them, it's because you're making crap, and you shouldn't be. When I read about games which didn't turn a profit, it's 9/10 times a reboot of an old franchise, an old established IP which relied on name to sell, a "clone" of another established game, or just a bad game in general. I never see a good new original game make a loss. Dead Space, Vanquish, Catherine...they all sold meh, and made money.

I got SF2 at launch it was the first 16Mb SNES cartridge. The going price was $69.99. The EB at my local mall had it for $77.99. Gouging bastards. As for PSIV it was $79.99 to 89.99 it was the first 24Mb Genesis game.



Cause games today can cost more than a blockbuster movie, you need to feed teams of 500 to 800 people over 4 years before you recover a single penny for the most ambitious.... with that in mind one mistake and you can break your entire business.... it's not EA MS or Activision that have issues with used games it's all the smaller ones... that need constant income after initial release to stay afloat....
And compared to a movie... games don't have second lives like TV rights sales or DVD/BR sales... streaming etc.... or at least not as much.... so that's why...
and compared to games DVD an CDs bought used are ridiculous.... so at equivalent production value with less income pipelines and a smaller audience you do the math....



endimion said:
Cause games today can cost more than a blockbuster movie, you need to feed teams of 500 to 800 people over 4 years before you recover a single penny for the most ambitious.... with that in mind one mistake and you can break your entire business.... it's not EA MS or Activision that have issues with used games it's all the smaller ones... that need constant income after initial release to stay afloat....
And compared to a movie... games don't have second lives like TV rights sales or DVD/BR sales... streaming etc.... or at least not as much.... so that's why...


Well. If they can't sustain teams of 500 people, that means they need to reduce those team sizes, it's not like you need teams of 500 people to make a game that prints money. See: Notch with Minecraft.
They have no one else to blame except themselves when they enter financial troubles, they certainly shouldn't price gauge consumers every chance they get either, that just creates negative sentiment against the company which can make the situation even worst down the road for themselves.

As for "constant income with reoccuring sales" it actually happens all the time, just not on consoles.
THQ before they went under had a bundle and sold over a million copies.
A 10+ year old game might arrive to Steam, hit the top of the sales charts (I.E. Like Fable and Age of Empires)
Game might go on special on Steam and hit the sales charts and hence sell thousands of copies for no extra work on the developer/publisher.
Game might have a popular mod released, again creating buzz and making the game that the mod needs to run... Hit the top of the sales charts. (DayZ and Arma 2 effect.)
Consoles however, games generally fall into obscurity after the initial release buzz.




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I buy the great games new (€ 50 -€ 60) or medium games 6 months after launch (often at €20 - € 30 new). Games drop in price relatively early if you can wait a bit.

When I bought a video games magazine last week and went through the test section I found 80% of the games were shooter... Maybe the companies should stop flooding the market with the same old game and expecting to sell millions of copies, especially when the gamer should spend 300h+ with the online mode... If you can only play 20h per week you would spend 15 weeks with that game and you would only buy 3-4 games every year...

I don't think that all "short" games are not worth keeping. There are short games that are entertaining and have something special that makes you think "I want to keep this game because I might play it again next year". Some games that try to give you a lot of playtime are getting old fast because they just stretch the playtime with repetitive content. I often get bored by open world games because although they offer much content they lack anything substantial to me.

Maybe the companies should try to up their diversity in genres. Making always the same old shooter game with minor tweaks and charging full price is not going to be successful for most of the companies.



god gamers are becoming the most self entitle b... now a days... it's like people on smartphone stores btching when a game is not free or cost more than 99 cents...

you don't make a game like forza or halo with the same team as mine craft.... especially if you want to respect a tight schedule....
you have tones of models to create.... you have to do motion capture, you have to do sound capture and equalization, soundtracks to make or buy rights from... you have huge engines to code, you have environement to recreate etc etc etc... people bitch when those title have a single flaw and then when dev say we struggle to stay afloat they say "guys you don't need that many staff, just fire some" what a great mentality.... lets retake the car industry for a second.... why not apply the same reasoning.... "hey guys you can relocate in china or why not replace humans by machines"....

you guys are basically saying you want the great games to keep coming and get better but you want to have nothing to do with the struggles company have keeping their staff or staying in a country with hire wages and taxation on salaries....

the more I read people on gamers forum the more I think they are right to cut of second hand sales.... you don't want to pay more for better games..... they don't want to fire their staff.... "this is what you get, we indefinitely rent you the game, but don't expect to sell it, it ain't yours no more bitches"....