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

scottie on 16 June 2013

Because of issues totally unrelated to used games.

PS3 was too hard to program for.

Game developers/publishers, for the most part, misunderstood the Wii, and it's target market.

The 360 just wasn't enough to carry developers, particularly those that focus outside of the USA.

End result of all that is, game developers and publishers started losing a lot of money, so they turn to something that they think will bring them in money. Whether it does or not is yet to be seen. I think a lot of people are going to have a lot less money to spend on new games and we'll see significant decreases to the first week sales of lots of big X1 games, which may or may not be made up for by improved legs.



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Jay520 on 16 June 2013
VGKing said:
Jay520 said:

You can do whatever you want with the game you bought. You can play it, sell it, lend it to a friend, etc. Nothing has changed. It's just that the machine your purchasing lacks the feature to play used games, but that's not a right. Microsoft's product doesn't have to be compatible with any discs they don't want it to be compatible with.

You'r wrong. Xbox One doesn't allow for lending/trading/renting games. Physical copies of games are locked to 1 account. If you want to lend this game to a friend, they have to be on your friends list for 30 days, then when you give them the game, you revoke your rights to it and it becomes theirs. They can't lend it to anyone else or give it back to you.



Yes you can. You can exercise your right to lend or sell your games. Microsoft is not physically stopping you from doing this. The console's ability to play these games is not relevant to whether your right to lend or rent them. Again, this is not about the consoles ability to play used games. It's about your freedom to sell or lend them away, which you can do.

VGKing on 16 June 2013
Jay520 said:
VGKing said:
Jay520 said:

You can do whatever you want with the game you bought. You can play it, sell it, lend it to a friend, etc. Nothing has changed. It's just that the machine your purchasing lacks the feature to play used games, but that's not a right. Microsoft's product doesn't have to be compatible with any discs they don't want it to be compatible with.

You'r wrong. Xbox One doesn't allow for lending/trading/renting games. Physical copies of games are locked to 1 account. If you want to lend this game to a friend, they have to be on your friends list for 30 days, then when you give them the game, you revoke your rights to it and it becomes theirs. They can't lend it to anyone else or give it back to you.


Yes you can. You can exercise your right to lend or sell your games. Microsoft is not physically stopping you from doing this. The console's ability to play these games is not relevant to whether your right to lend or rent them. Again, this is not about the consoles ability to play used games. It's about your freedom to sell or lend them away, which you can do.

No, you can't. That's what the DRM systems stops you from doing. 

Specialty stores like Gamestop CAN take in your Xbox One games but they have to deactivate them somehow through MS servers.

You can no longer freely trade your games back and forth between 2 people. There needs to be a middle man and that is Microsoft or Gamestop.



Areym on 16 June 2013
DJEVOLVE said:
zorg1000 said:

Not every game needs to be AAA and just because a game doesnt cost 50 million or ehatever big blockbuster games cost, doesnt make them bad. They should focus on gameplay not graphics and other bullshit that raise the production costs. Were seeing games that dont sell mutliple millioms being considered failures. 

Square Enix is a good example, Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs and Hitman failed to meet sales expectations despite there being no reason SE thought they would sell that well.

THQ going under despite having 2 big franchises in Saints Row and Darksiders even tho those games were successful.

Idk maybe drop the budget in half and sell games at $40, they wont have to sell as many units to make the money and people will be more willing to try nee games.



All to keep the used games. F that.

People like you...for once, think about someone else but yourself.



"Trick shot? The trick is NOT to get shot." - Lucian

dukerx2 on 16 June 2013

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.



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richardhutnik on 16 June 2013
VGKing said:
richardhutnik said:

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.

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

Well, what I had said here was based on an Angry Joe interview with Major Nelson, so it could change again.



Michael-5 on 16 June 2013
Miguel_Zorro said:
Michael-5 said:
tracyllrkn said:
Probably because publishers are barely making a profit, or even not making a profit at all.

Last I checked EA, Activision, and Microsoft were doing anything but struggling. Like I said Square Enix wouldn't have existed if Final Fantasy didn't do exceptionatly well, it was just as hard to be big back then as it is now.

How can you say publishers are struggling now, but not before, when we had rental game services, and a smaller market?

Many, many game companies have gone out of business. Here's a list:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Defunct_video_game_companies

Not all of the companies on that list went out of business for financial reasons, but many of them did.

Also, the cost of a game 20-30 years ago was more, in both real and inflation adjusted terms, that it is now.  I remember paying $70 for SNES games.  That's like $110 in today's dollars.

How many of those have gone debunk recently? Do you know if statistically more companies are going bust now then before? I can tell you that a lot of the bankrupt game companies on that list went bankrupt in the 1980's. Remember the big gaming crash of 83?

Also where the heck did you pay $70 for SNES games? SNES games were $40/$50 brand new, N64 games were $50 for the most part too. Nowadays a brand new game day 1 costs $60, and can have anything from $30-$80 of DLC.

$50 in 1996 is about $75 in todays currency, so you're right games are cheaper now, but not as much as you make it seem and when you factor in DLC, they really aren't.



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Jay520 on 16 June 2013
VGKing said:

No, you can't. That's what the DRM systems stops you from doing. 

Specialty stores like Gamestop CAN take in your Xbox One games but they have to deactivate them somehow through MS servers.

You can no longer freely trade your games back and forth between 2 people. There needs to be a middle man and that is Microsoft or Gamestop.


You do not understand. Let me try to be more clear.

You can trade your games back and forth. If you gave your game to a friend, Microsoft is not going to stop you. 

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

DRM stops the console from playing used games. It does NOT stop you from trading or lending or selling your used games.

Trading/lending/selling =/= playing.



papamudd on 16 June 2013

Honestly, I think COD is the problem (not in and of itself, and not as any sort of comment about how awesome or horrible that game is itself) because of the big budgets spent on advertising that other companies try to mimic when certain games take up a larger portion of sales due to word of mouth/advertising/fanaticism.



Talal said:
I will permaban myself if the game releases in 2014.

in reference to KH3 release date

VGKing on 16 June 2013
Jay520 said:
VGKing said:

No, you can't. That's what the DRM systems stops you from doing. 

Specialty stores like Gamestop CAN take in your Xbox One games but they have to deactivate them somehow through MS servers.

You can no longer freely trade your games back and forth between 2 people. There needs to be a middle man and that is Microsoft or Gamestop.


You do not understand. Let me try to be more clear.

You can trade your games back and forth. If you gave your game to a friend, Microsoft is not going to stop you. 

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

DRM stops the console from playing used games. It does NOT stop you from trading or lending or selling your used games.

Trading/lending/selling =/= playing.

That's the whole fucking point.