What has changed from before? Gamestop.

People always compare video games to other products like cars, houses, etc to point out why used games are not a problem. There are two differences between games and other items though.

a) Games do not depreciate. Assuming it is still readable, a used copy of Super Mario Galaxy and a new copy are exactly the same in terms of the content they provide.

b) The largest retailer of new games (by FAR) is also the largest retailer of used games and they are VERY aggressive about selling used games as opposed to new.

Whenever you try to buy a game that is more than a month old at Gamestop, they will offer you a practically identical product that is less expensive. This is a problematic business model. The impact of Gamestop's insane market share over the industry and their pushing of used games is a bad thing.

Basically the problem is not person to person sales that are the norm in any industry. The problem is when that person to person selling becomes replaced by a massive company that forms a near monopoly over the second hand market and aggressively pushes second hand over new. This isn't a particularly healthy business model.

The problem with the XBox One is that Microsoft is making customers pay for what Gamestop is doing. I think that overall it is a good thing for the industry if publishers made an arrangement with Gamestop to receive a portion of revenues generated by used games. Taking away consumer rights to accomplish this end is a bad thing.

As a collector I buy alot of used games (most of the old titles) but its a ratio of 50/50 as I also buy my share of new titles also.

As I see it:

* Game publishers have pushed development costs through the roof, in order to out production value rival companies and games, to build franchises.  This means very thin margins.

* The like of Gamestop have decided to push used content at the expense of new content.  The profit margins are much larger on used games.  I believe the retailers makes like $5 profit max per game, with possible deluxe editions selling for more.

These factors have made there a desire to, once they killed off piracy for all practical purposes, to go after used content.  Look for the next step to be buying games period and wanting people to actually rent content for awhile, and having to keep paying to play.  

The One is going to have a "family" list of 10 people where each person on your family list can check out games in your library.  But renting is pretty much toast, giving away is a one time deal, and trading in is done through authorized dealers.

What about when I sell a game on eBay? Publishers wouldn't get any portion of the sale, but then how many used games are sold online in comparision to used game sales to GameStop?

I agree with your point, but your logic is a bit flawed. A used car, even with <100km on it, is much much cheaper then a new car for the simple fact that it's used. A used game is 90% the same price as a new game.

But I do agree with you, if Ford doesn't want you upgrading to a Jetta, they should have made a more reliable car, which you would have less reason to sell. This is why Toyota's depreciation is so low, people don't sell their Toyota's. If a publisher doesn't want people to sell their game, they should make better games, which people don't want to sell. This is why some JRPG's, and high volume games like Call of Duty, don't depreciate quickly.

I was just thinking about this now. If we look at the biggest game companies now, it's Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony, Activision, EA, and then I believe Ubisoft (in that order). If we look 20 years ago it was Nintendo, Sega, Squaresoft, and Capcom. Last I checked it was EA who made Online passes and Microsoft making consoles which prevent used game sales. I never heard of the Japanese studios complaining about "not making enough profit." They understand that with more competition, quality needs to be higher to survive.

I agree with you, games need to sell more to make a profit, but that's also the problem. Why is it that Platinum Studios can make a profit selling a few hundred thousand copies of Bayonetta, or Atlus can make a profit selling a few hundred thousand copies of Catherine (both excellent games), but THQ goes out of buisness since they can't sell 3 million units of Saints Row?

Some studios just aren't efficient. While Saints Row, and DMC (Ninja Theory) are great games, they needlessly expensive to produce. The people developing the games just aren't as talented as the people behind Vanquish or Tales of ___.

I think banning used games is wrong, in the example of cars, do we ban trading in Cryslers just because reliability is crap and people don't want to hold onto them? No, we let them phase out. Sad to say, THQ, and Ninja Theory should phase out because they can't make great games on a budget.

I'd rather have a game culture where we saw less console games, but they were all excellent, then a culture where are more games, but half of them are only mediocre. The former would increase sales for games which are actually great (since there are less studios and thus less games to compete with), and it would push smaller developers to work on smaller projects, maybe for handheld games, and reduce the size of their company (which would make them more efficient).

It's not nice to say that I'd rather have crap studios disband, but this is the way the world is. If you want your product to sell, you have to make a great game which either has a large market (Just Dance), or make a great game which has low development costs (Vanquish).

Games are more expensive, they cost millions to make and require hundreds-thousands of people to develop now. Before games didn't cost more than 50 thousand  and required small teams(12-50 people).

a) Games do depreciate, look up the price of GT3. However I get what you mean, a used copy of a game is nearly the same value as the price when new (in most cases)

b) Here's how you fix the problem, make games so good people don't sell them. . I would never sell my copy of Mario Party 2 because I love it, and still play it regularly. Same with Lost Odyssey, it took a long time to beat, and not only was the resale value low by the time I beat it, the game was so good, I wanted to keep it.

Japan has a much larger used game market then the rest of the world, if you see game sales there, there is a HUGE spike week 1, and then a steep crash. Yet Japanese studios don't complain about a loss of profits, they got more efficient. Platinum Studios can make 9/10 games, which make a profit, even with <1 million copies sold, no problem. Namco has no issues with Tales of Vesperia, even though most games sell <1 million. Yet EA is complaining when Need for Speed, an average franchise, doesn't return a profit? All this means is that EA should stop making Need for Speed, not that there is a problem with the market.

Remember, while Gamestop makes all the revenue sold by used games, BlockBuster used to make all the revenue produced by rental games. BlockBuster also had a monopoly.

I agree with you, back in the day, a game selling 2 million units was a huge success, why are devs designing games which require high sales to generate profit?

As a great example, Platinum Studios can make a profit with games that sell <1 million. Why does InSomniac need more then 1 million? I think in terms of Quality, Vanquish is >>>> Fuse, so if a game like Fuse is selling badly, then good. InSomniac should learn from their mistakes, and listen to critisism about Fuse and make a better, or more appealing games, next time.

The comment I'm read multiple times basically blaimes greed. EA makes a lot of money off a lot of its franchises, yet they still complain when some of their weaker franchises don't sell as well as they hoped. The simple thing is, everyone makes a bad game now and then, and they learn from it. If that dev/publisher can't learn from their mistakes making multiple games which make little profit, then they should stop making games.

Squaresoft leart their lesson in the late 80's with Final Fantasy. They kept making average games which didn't make as much profit as they wanted to and eventually pooled all their money into one final project and called it "Final Fantasy." This later became one of the best quality and most respected franchises in gaming. I like the surviving Square Enix, I wouldn't have liked the old pre-FF Square soft....

To an extent, that's true, but small studios with a little over 100 people can still produce excellent games. e.g. Polyphony Digital with Gran Turismo, and Platinum Studios with Vanquish.

However there were also less games on the market before, with less studios producing games, which sold less copies on average.

I don't think the problem is that studio's need x sales to make a profit. I think the problem is, we have too many studios which produce sub-par games. Yes the quality of the average video game has gone up, but that's what happens with more competition. Studios shouldn't be complaining that the competition is too much. Like an athlete, they should either work harder/more efficiently to achieve better results (better games), or give up, and try something else.

Not the same and how exactly that works keeps changing every day apparently.