Sorry, but I'm all for the 2nd hand game marketplace...as a consumer, it's my right to sell the game whenever and for whatever price I choose...one way around it for developers/publishers to a provide exclusive to the original onwer.

You are the one who hasn't understood my argument. It's very simple, I will spell it out for you:

1- There are (or at least were, before the Gamestop monopoly started buying all stores) many stores which only sell new games (along with accessories and consoles of course), before the used games mania came along. I noticed you're 20 years old so maybe you simply don't remember this pre-Gamestop period very well.

2- These stores were in business for years.

3- Hence, it's reasonable to conclude that this was a reasonable and profitable business model.

Until you have given a reason why this argument doesn't work, or doesn't work anymore (for example by showing some evidence that margins have decreased), you are going against reality.

Basically I'm out of this thread unless you convincingly disprove this argument.

My argument is that stores nowadays cannot operate without other forms of income other then just first hand sales. I don't need to look back in the history books as to why it might have been possible - as I know isn't in the current climate - and the simple fact no store is built on that business model now is testament to that.

 I cant honestly recall one store in the UK ever being based entirely on that business model - if anyone in here can name any then pleae do.

Earlier you mentioned the Spectrum ZX, is that the era you're refering to when you say stores used to only sell first hand games? Cause that is wayyyyyyyyyyyyy too far back to compare to the industry as it is now. I obviously have limited to knowledge of back then but the way games / retail worked wasn't like it was once Nintendo entered the game.

Finally found an article on this :).

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_26/159-A-Marginal-Business

Well, I can say that you didn't do a thorough reading of my post, then. Note how early in my post, I acknowledge that the numbers are for last-gen. However, the $10 margin on a $50 Wii game remains today. (The margin on a $60 HD game is $12, whereas a $40 PSP game is $8, a $30 DS game {or HD greatest hits} is $6, and a $20 greatest hit PS2 game is $4. All of these play into the 20% margin that I said was correct.) So sure, I can get $12 on those $60 games, but costs have also gone up for the retailer at this point. (Minimum wage now is $7.25, so payroll costs are greater, and mall rents have certainly gone up also.)

As for stolen games, yes, there are a lot of protections in place on games; I mentioned how hard it is to recover from a game that walks. This is why games on the shelf are either gutted (Gamestop), in hard plastic boxes with security devices (Best Buy), in locked glass cases (Wal-Mart), or even slips of paper (Toys R Us). But all of these have costs incurred with them also, which is something that I was factoring. At that point, you're having to spend more money to prevent lost money. It's an investment worth making, to be sure, but it is another investment, nonetheless. You'll note that I factored in the security cost as a limiter, not the actual theft cost. (Theft is a bitch to measure as a ratio, but if every game gets security, it's easier to calculate.

Also, as jammy mentioned, there still are other expenses. He mentioned insurance and maintenance, but there's still more, like signage, or, as Gamestop does on occasion, securing exclusives. And this list can keep going, I'm sure. The costs to running a business are dizzying.

At least someone is making money off the resale.

1 thing that everyone forgot.
The good game fetch much higher resale value.

For example, used Zelda TP game still costs $50 - 60 used. The incentive to buy used is just not there.

The same is true when selling your games back to the shop. A shitty game will get you $2 that you just bought for $60 a day ago.

I'd say close to one-third of the 360 games I bought were from the resale market (but only 1 was used. Rest was brand new sealed stuff that other gamers bought but never got around to playing. So they sold on ebay and what not). And I've mainly switched to renting now (subscription). There's nothing illegal or morally wrong with buying second-hand or renting. It's good for my wallet, that's why I do it. Capitalism isn't about charity. As a consumer, I'm going to go with what I see to be a good deal. And if gaming companies go out of business because of that, then maybe they need to scale down their budgets for financially unsuccessful games so that they don't lose so much money.

If for eg. people don't want to pay full price for a short single-player game or say a light gun shooter (ie. Dead Space Extraction, the recent RE game), what should companies do? Bitch and complain? No. How about scale down the production costs of these games so that they can be profitable. Gaming companies have to realize that you can't extract blood from a stone. Gamers aren't exactly loaded with cash. Especially during these tough economic times. They should scale-down production of games with low demand accordingly to stay in the black. I'm not saying to scale-down production for games across the board. Highly successful games like Assassin's Creed should stay big budget. But if you have short singleplayer HD games with big budgets but low purchasing demand and rail shooters with low demand at $50, your production budget should scale down accordingly.

Sounds like Mass Effect 2 on PC has some sort of re-selling prevention thing going on. My brother was looking at buying it for PC, but after trying to run Dragon Age and not being able to he wanted to be sure he could return the game if it didn't work. The guy at the store said that if he bought ME2 there is no way he could return the game because once installed on his PC that game disc could never be used on any other PC.

As far as I'm concerned that sort of control is evil. More evil than piracy IMO. If a game disc can be individualised to a PC, then a DVD or CD can be individualised to a DVD player / CD player. Just because the technology exists to exert that level of control doesn't mean it should be permitted.

There are games I want to buy new because I know I'm going to like them enough to want to support the developer that way. There are toehr games that I would never buy new because they just aren't that good in my opinion, so I can go without unless I find them chaep used, or rent them out. Developers are not losing a sale from me 'cause I was never gonna buy that game new.

I'm not going to buy Uncharted 2 used, because I want to support ND for making such a great game, so I'm going to buy it new. Same with Ratchet and Clank. But Resistance I bought used because I saw it for cheap and thought, "for that price it's worth giving it a go". It's only sort of worth the price I paid, for me.

Second hand games market can mean the games stores make up to 10 to 15 sales from one game and make lots of profits from the reselling of the same game over and over. Only one new game purchase would have been recorded despite 10 to 15 purchases of that same used game through trades. Piracy results in 0 sales of the game due to games being leaked before launch and torrented online.

New games selling for a reduced retail value is better than a used game sale. Used game sales could be partially blamed for a reduction in new game sales which have sadly led to the demise of some game developers.

A good argument for the used game market here is that used games keep a lot of game stores in business. Major retailers as far as I know do not have used game trade and sell discounted new games. Specialised game stores and pawn brokers are the stores that rely heavily on the second hand trade.

At the end of the day what would you prefer a new game or a used game? I personally would want a new game and nothing beats taking off the plastic seal from a new game. I do not just buy any game only the best games are for me. Thank god for Metacritic/Gamerankings that give us all an idea on what games are hot and which games are not.