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Forums - Gaming - Gamestop to overhaul trade-ins, average base value to increase 20%

Landguy on 05 August 2014
The Fury said:
Landguy said:

Funny how you discount that used games have ANY impact and your opinion that thieves are the ONLY cause?

Get real...

There are obviously many causes for DRM.  Even without thieves or used games, there will always be DRM.  The point behind almost every version of DRM is to force a level of control onto the consumer.  To get them to do something for the original content provider.  Maybe its just there to make you come back to their "store" or to make sure you are the one using it or to monitor the usage level to determine future sequels or DLC or to just keep you interested in other services they provide.

DRM is really just a part of the technology advancements that have been made.

Sure they have some impact, it's negligible compared to other reasons development studios fail though, people stealing, the rising cost of development in general etc, used games sales are nothing in comparison. But I was talking about console DRM, theives are the reason for that not used games, you really think MS's original plans of login in once every day even if it's a single player game had anything to do with Used Games?

Get real...

DRM is fine depending on the requirements and restrictions it places on the content. No one (really) has an issue with PSN, Xbox Live Store or Steam DRM  on downloaded games because we expect it. Downloaded titles from these mediums could easily be copied and pasted if DRM wasn't in place, yet a game disc that a consumer wants to do with as they please shouldn't have any DRM except that of which means the game is on the disc. They give away the disc they lose the rights to place the game, they burn the disc, same thing.

Negligible?  I would like some proof that would say that any reason is bigger than another.

Besides that, I don't disagree that when DRM in it's infancy 15 years ago was all to do with thieves.  Sony was one of the biggest pushers in this area.  THey came up with or supported almost every version anti copying technology.  They were big into creating ways to stop the thieves.  They even were trying to put the codes that come with discs into music CDs at one point.  BUT, technology and the internet actually stopped them from being able to do it.  As fast as they could create a new thing to stop the thieves, the work around was put onto the internet within days.

The reasons in 2014 are not just thieves any longer.  The technologies that were created to stop thieves opened the door to basically all companies to ask themselves "what else can we get from this".  As it turns out, they are now seing that in the long term, they will control the users and their buying habits.  They get the benefits of no thieving for free.  People have accepted buying online and even having to sign into steam/origin/ea/ios/PSN/XBL or whatever to play their games.  The need to worry about the theft aspect is decreasing every day as more and more people accept the daily DRM of signing into a service.

There will probably be a niche market for gamers 3-5 years from now to still buy games on disc, but that may not be the case.  Like you said, whay take the chance that a disc will be copied when the majority of the users don't mind the DRM.



It is near the end of the end....

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NiKKoM on 05 August 2014

See.. it really doesn't matter what gamestop does... they could save a dozen of kittens.. We'll always hate them...



 

Face the future.. Gamecenter ID: nikkom_nl (oh no he didn't!!) 

Intrinsic on 05 August 2014

Am I the only one that feels sony and MS are heavily dropping the ball on game pricing which makes nonsense like this even necessary?

If I were sony/ms;
I would drop the price of every digitally released game that sold over 1 million copies by 50% (to $30) after 6 months on the market. We all know that majority of a games sales happens in its first 30-60 days.

3 months after that (9 months after release) I would drop the price to $20 to own the game, and provide an option to rent the game for 30 days at $10.

I will also give new game reward points (RP) for every new game purchase. So say you buy a new game you get 5RP. The RP has equivalent monetary value and can be used at anytime. If you rack up enough RP you can use it and buy any number of games/dlc. This will in effect reward those that buy games between the first 6 months at full price and keep them buying from the network.

Why this is so hard to do is beyond me. Yet they complain about used game sales. Give people better prices and faster bigger discounts and they would buy from you instead of resorting to the used bin.



KingWithNoKrown on 05 August 2014

Cool I guess. I stopped trading in games to them long ago though.



The Fury on 05 August 2014
Landguy said:

Negligible?  I would like some proof that would say that any reason is bigger than another.

Besides that, I don't disagree that when DRM in it's infancy 15 years ago was all to do with thieves.  Sony was one of the biggest pushers in this area.  THey came up with or supported almost every version anti copying technology.  They were big into creating ways to stop the thieves.  They even were trying to put the codes that come with discs into music CDs at one point.  BUT, technology and the internet actually stopped them from being able to do it.  As fast as they could create a new thing to stop the thieves, the work around was put onto the internet within days.

The reasons in 2014 are not just thieves any longer.  The technologies that were created to stop thieves opened the door to basically all companies to ask themselves "what else can we get from this".  As it turns out, they are now seing that in the long term, they will control the users and their buying habits.  They get the benefits of no thieving for free.  People have accepted buying online and even having to sign into steam/origin/ea/ios/PSN/XBL or whatever to play their games.  The need to worry about the theft aspect is decreasing every day as more and more people accept the daily DRM of signing into a service.

There will probably be a niche market for gamers 3-5 years from now to still buy games on disc, but that may not be the case.  Like you said, whay take the chance that a disc will be copied when the majority of the users don't mind the DRM.

Fair enough, no proof given, therefore what I say is bullcrap. However I struggle to understand how games put into disc based retail that sells 500k new (tracked) copies (a) doesn't make a profit (b) of those 500k, how the lose of maybe 5k extra used game sales will make a difference in these overall profits. 

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/less-than-half-of-gamestops-customers-know-they-ca/1100-6421309/ This article says Gamestop used games sales counts as $1.2 billion in revenue, their overall revenue according to 2009 wiki is over $9 billion. And they are one of few modern outlets that do used games sales (most online stores don't).

I understand your other points. Sure there are ways around the loss of income by opening up new revenue angles but used games should be included in that, as for many people it's how they buy, exchange and play games contantly instead of buying one games and that's it. If they don't want people to buy used and want then to buy digital then they have to make the prices competitive instead of just expensive.

Oh and just so you know: http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/digital-and-mobile/5901188/cd-album-sales-fall-behind-album-downloads-is-2014-the

Don't expect disc based games to become a niche market any times soon if even music digital sales are only just outpacing CD sales.



Hmm, pie.

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archer9234 on 05 August 2014
Neodegenerate said:
g911turbo said:

DRM is not because of Gamestop.  If anything, you could argue it's partially because of the used game market which includes ebay and craigslist (which give the seller better return anyways).  And if none of those avenues existed, we'd be facing DRM issues anyways!

Devs would be smart to push MS and Sony to implement an online digital game marketplace, where you can buy and sell your digital licenses.  People don't usually take well to an abrupt, ALL OR NOTHING approach (meaning either buy new or don't play).

You (and others who have responded the same way) do realize that when I said "Gamestop and other stores" I didn't mean "Gamestop is the only place you can get used games and therefore I am only talking, obviously, about Gamestop" yes?  I didn't think I would have to spell this one out.  What I mean is: gamestop, and any other used game market area.  There, now I guess we can move on.

Yes, you are obviously correct in that we would have DRM issues anyway.  Used games though, are a large part of the reason why.  

And to address the "games go out of print" piece from another poster, yes that game would have to be bought used if you wanted it.  I am not saying to halt all used game sales.  I am simply speaking to a major contributor to why consoles are facing DRM issues.  I personally don't care if they DRM the hell outta me.  I will check in online each day, I will buy new - or pay for the online pass if I want the game at a used price - doesn't matter.

No matter what you do. You will not get everyone to buy a game at a certain price. That's how it is with everything. It's why a lot Blu-ray sets fail. And then no futher releases are done. Because nowadays, having HD is not a reason to make a set $60. VS $40 on DVD. People just want the cheaper price. Regardless of how much it makes to produce, the extra pixels you get, or even restricting bonus features to it.

This won't change in any area of material need/want. Companies need to figure out how to stop costs from going up to redicules sizes. Or you need your new franchise to reach 5 million sales, or it bellys up. Removing other optional factors won't change a lot of those peoples choices. It might work to a degree. But the other option is for a person to go "Games are too much. Forget it. I don't want this anymore."

No matter how pasionate you are to something. There are more people who don't care about it that much. And will just quit it at whim.



Landguy on 05 August 2014
The Fury said:

Fair enough, no proof given, therefore what I say is bullcrap. However I struggle to understand how games put into disc based retail that sells 500k new (tracked) copies (a) doesn't make a profit (b) of those 500k, how the lose of maybe 5k extra used game sales will make a difference in these overall profits. 

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/less-than-half-of-gamestops-customers-know-they-ca/1100-6421309/ This article says Gamestop used games sales counts as $1.2 billion in revenue, their overall revenue according to 2009 wiki is over $9 billion. And they are one of few modern outlets that do used games sales (most online stores don't).

I understand your other points. Sure there are ways around the loss of income by opening up new revenue angles but used games should be included in that, as for many people it's how they buy, exchange and play games contantly instead of buying one games and that's it. If they don't want people to buy used and want then to buy digital then they have to make the prices competitive instead of just expensive.

Oh and just so you know: http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/digital-and-mobile/5901188/cd-album-sales-fall-behind-album-downloads-is-2014-the

Don't expect disc based games to become a niche market any times soon if even music digital sales are only just outpacing CD sales.

I agree, the digital versions of games SHOULD be atleast 20% less expensive than their retail version.  That day may come, but not until retail dumps game sales altogether.  To get retail to keep the games on the shelves, there can't be such a major difference in the prices between the two.  The bad part is, that when this happens, they won't bother to pass on the discount to us end users, as we will be used to the prices by then.  Also, PSN/XBL type interfaces will just absorb the retail profits.

Just an added thought to the Music sales link.  The comparison is kind of iffy, as they are talking about WHOLE album sales.  Most music isn't purchased in whole albums anymore.  Even in the article, they state that digital sales exceed hard copy sales in 2011.  Even knowing that, I am a little surprised that album sales are still chugging along on CD.  I just thought back to the last few full albums that me or my wife purchased and 4 of the 6 were on CD.  Of course, that took 2 years or so to accomplish.  Just this year, both of my cars are now bluetooth(used to be just mine) capable.  So, my wife now agrees that she will buy music digital only.  It will take a while longer, but the reason to even have a cd player is going away.  Just like a number of people that I know that don't even have a DVD/Bluray player anymore.  As things break or whatever, people might not even replace them.



It is near the end of the end....

Tamron on 05 August 2014

20% more?
Awesome, they'll give you $0.12 for Fifa 12 instead of $0.10.



Cobretti2 on 05 August 2014

i buy all my used games (retro) from users directly so don't really care what they do lol.



 

 

Neodegenerate on 05 August 2014
The Fury said:

Fair enough, no proof given, therefore what I say is bullcrap. However I struggle to understand how games put into disc based retail that sells 500k new (tracked) copies (a) doesn't make a profit (b) of those 500k, how the lose of maybe 5k extra used game sales will make a difference in these overall profits. 

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/less-than-half-of-gamestops-customers-know-they-ca/1100-6421309/ This article says Gamestop used games sales counts as $1.2 billion in revenue, their overall revenue according to 2009 wiki is over $9 billion. And they are one of few modern outlets that do used games sales (most online stores don't).

The revenue numbers you have here indicate that 13.3% (or so) of Gamestops revenue is in used games.  So that 500k new example in your first paragraph would have around 66k used sales, not 5k.  Furthermore, the profit on the used game sales is significantly higher than the profit on the new game sales since the developers see 0% of the used game sales.

I understand your other points. Sure there are ways around the loss of income by opening up new revenue angles but used games should be included in that, as for many people it's how they buy, exchange and play games contantly instead of buying one games and that's it. If they don't want people to buy used and want then to buy digital then they have to make the prices competitive instead of just expensive.

Oh and just so you know: http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/digital-and-mobile/5901188/cd-album-sales-fall-behind-album-downloads-is-2014-the

Don't expect disc based games to become a niche market any times soon if even music digital sales are only just outpacing CD sales.

I agree completely with this point.  Pricing on digital is perceived very poorly (hell, one guy is calling for 20% less in another post) and needs some form of adjustment.  I personally have been buying a lot more from the PS store when I see a great sale digitally, hoping that the trend continues: more sales.