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Forums - Gaming - Real reason why used games are hurting the gaming industry...

Pemalite on 20 June 2013
JayWood2010 said:

Where does most of these used games get sold at?  That's right, gamestop.  That is the problem.

Fact is studios has been shutting down all generation and many are focusing on mobile phones now.


Lots of companies have been shutting down across the planet, that's what happens when essentially the entire developed world goes into recession.
Don't blame used games, they were not a problem before the financial crisis.

It's like how publishers claim Piracy killed the PC, it never happened, publishers still sell 10-15+ Million copies of a game, Blizzard, Bethesda and Valve are perfect examples of that.

Besides, after every great market expansion you have massive consolidation and that's what's happening right now, companies are closing and consolidating with others just before a new generation is about to begin and potentially see another big expansion.

Don't spin the used games excuse, so many other factors at play influencing the industry.




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fordy on 20 June 2013

I see used games as a double-edged sword. One one side, people sell their games when they no longer see the replay value in said game. On the other hand, an excess of the same used game pushes the used price down for said game, making it more of an incentive for people to buy it used (especially if they see so many used versions of that title on the shelves and think "maybe I shouldn't risk buying it new"). So in other words, it's more like a triple whammy.

The solution? Lower the incentive people have to sell their game. Make it a game that they want to hold on to. A dramatic increase in the gameplay and replay value is a good start...



zuvuyeay on 20 June 2013

some fair points and it is noticeable over here that game selling shops actively promote in store their used products over new which never was the case earlier in the gen it seems,it is hard to see an alternative unless everything is digital,i'm sure some of us don't mind but we are the tiny minority who do it digital,but i barely have a high street anymore

every company would have to be in on it to go digital,they didn't go through with it this time,i certainly think it is the future but then they said video would kill the cinema quite a few years ago now



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richardhutnik on 20 June 2013
Birimbau said:
disolitude said:
Birimbau said:

I already said before, if publishers feel that they are losing money nexxt gen, they just need to rise the price of the games($60 to $70 for example), and profits will remain at least as before.

That will once again not solve the cancer that is the problem but just postpone it. Only games will be heavily invested in to which will sell on day 1...since all gaming companies want those first day sales before the used games cycle begins.

Also Andorid and Apple devices are offering games for 1/10th the cost and some of them are pretty comparable. They can't afford to raise the prices. 


Games for PS2-XBOX cost $49 and the price was increased to $59 with PS360, so it's natural to expect another jump to $69 sooner or later.

The cost now pushes like $100 with DLC.  It isn't initial purchase that is up, it is the back end with the DLC.  So, it isn't natural to expect a jump higher.  But don't expect lower prices.



theRepublic on 20 June 2013
disolitude said:

Used games sales are killing the industry because they are pushing the publishers to invest in fewer and fewer new original IPs and take less risks. This is because every high budget game is designed to push day 1 sales and sell as much as possible before trade-ins start to happen.

That has everything to do with budgets growing out of control and nothing to do with used games.



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disolitude on 20 June 2013
richardhutnik said:
Birimbau said:
disolitude said:
Birimbau said:

I already said before, if publishers feel that they are losing money nexxt gen, they just need to rise the price of the games($60 to $70 for example), and profits will remain at least as before.

That will once again not solve the cancer that is the problem but just postpone it. Only games will be heavily invested in to which will sell on day 1...since all gaming companies want those first day sales before the used games cycle begins.

Also Andorid and Apple devices are offering games for 1/10th the cost and some of them are pretty comparable. They can't afford to raise the prices. 


Games for PS2-XBOX cost $49 and the price was increased to $59 with PS360, so it's natural to expect another jump to $69 sooner or later.

The cost now pushes like $100 with DLC.  It isn't initial purchase that is up, it is the back end with the DLC.  So, it isn't natural to expect a jump higher.  But don't expect lower prices.

Knowing your gaming tastes...here are some games with crazy low prices that are digital

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Promotion/Special-Sales

If there wasn't such a massive push to get day 1 sales in the books and then milk every possible dollar through addons that you can't trade away, game prices would come down. We are essentially in 2004. Steam had the exact same issue with PC gamers flipping out about being able to give and trade games. Look how awesome it is now...



MoHasanie on 20 June 2013

I definitely agree, especially with that content releasing over time thing.



    

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Metallicube on 20 June 2013

It is not used games that are killing the industry. It is the industry ITSELF. Think about it, if these developers' games were good enough, there wouldn't be that many people wanting to sell them back and buy them used on the cheap.



TripleMMM on 20 June 2013
badgenome said:

Well, you specifically cited Gamestop, and Gamestop is kind of the most demonized entity in the used games witch hunt. But yeah, you can trade in used games to Best Buy or sell them on Ebay or give them away to Goodwill. So what? Again, if the industry needs to eradicate property rights in order to live, then it needs to fucking die.

A potential sale is not the same as an actual sale. This is the same way that every act of piracy is considered by some people to be a lost sale, but it isn't in the vast majority of cases. A pirated copy was rarely ever going to be a sold copy. The same is true to a very large extent with second hand sales as well when prices of new games (and even digital copies) are so stupidly resistant to the downward pressure exerted on them by the used market. A lot of those people will just simply buy fewer games, and the Cliff Bleszinskis of the world will still blame the consumer.

Even the complete eradication of used games and a 100% digital market place would not to solve the industry's woes. It wasn't that long ago that we were in the cartridge era, and as Mark Cerny pointed out at GDC, an $80 RPG would see as little as $1-2 going toward developer costs. That was insane, and dirt cheap optical media was something of a savior... for a while. But here we are again thanks, not to piracy or rentals or anything else, but to the explosive growth of gaming budgets because stupid investors and publishers demand that every single game be AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA and the next Call of Duty.

Bloody hell, a post of Badgenome, that I actually agree with and can not for the life of me point out very few sarcastic tone? I feel I still have much to learn...

Bold: Rocket Propelled Grenade? That's it, I'm ignorant! -_-'



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badgenome on 20 June 2013
TripleMMM said:

Bold: Rocket Propelled Grenade? That's it, I'm ignorant! -_-'

Role-playing game. I think Cerny specified RPGs because they usually had the carts with the battery inside so that you could save your game, which added even more to the already ridiculously high cost of manufacture.