Pressure piles on pre-owned games

The pre-owned games division may be set to go on life support, as many games studio developers have expressed concern at gamestores raking in profits from pre-owned games while the developers get nothing.

[Jack Bauer]

if you sell your car should you have to pay the manufacturer to sell YOUR car...

[ruibing]

I think its natural to buy used games when the retail version is priced too high or its just not readily available in your local area or your favorite online retailer. I bought tons of PS2 games from eBay, but I also buy retail ones from Amazon and other stores when I really want to support the developer, like Square Enix and Konami.

I think everyone buys a game depending on whether its cost or state is more important. It's like deciding between a preowned and a new car, you sometimes must have it new, while other times you can't pass by a great deal.

[stevenhiggster]

Thats exactly what I was thinking, can you imagine if ford wanted a cut every time a second hand car was sold, what a load of crap!

This guy is just a tit, clearly he is in the wrong job and should just open a games shop and stop moanin.

[socomnick]

Once you buy a game it is your property you can do what ever you want with that disc. If a game store buys it from you then they are now the owners of that disc and therefore are entitled to 100 percent of the money generated from selling it.

[Jack Bauer]

you cannot make copies of it and sell em...so ya cant do w/e ya want but... id rather buy new anyway... one time i bought a used game that looked like someone threw up on it and ive gotten games with so many scratches... i have tried to get scratches on my games (well blank discs) through normal ware and tare and i cannot do what these people who trade their games in do.

[socomnick]

lol yea every time I buy a used game I ask to see it first most of the time it has no scratches or tiny ones. I usually get new releases for like 50 dollars so thats a 10+ tax savings.

[ENNO]

Is stupid,I sell them to friends and other people on the net...make triple what I could get from those sciving bastards...

[games4fun]

would be to them seriously they give you a little less than half of the game price if your lucky and then resell it for twice what they paid you. Its kind of stupid that they get away with this selling on ebay is way better.

[CyberSentinel]

One solution is to do like the MMO market does, encode every "game" with a "key" and lock it to a single user and/or account BEFORE it will be activated. In order to play said game you would HAVE to agree with the EULA.

@5.1: Exactly. Problem solved.

@5.2: I know the idea of not being able to play used, pre-owned, rentals, and copied games frighten some, but this is the only option, other then raising prices for retail games.

[ENNO]

That would mean no more rentals...screw that sh!t

[Lionsguard]

ever.

[kn]

The secondary market actually increases retail demand for new titles. A game like stranglehold or heavenly sword -- each a 6 hour game start to finish would not fetch nearly as many $60 purchasers as it would when the buyer knows they can trade it in or sell it on ebay and effectively reduce their acquisition cost. The person who buys it used for half or 2/3 the cost of new probably would not have purchased it at the new retail price. What it means, effectively, is that the retail buyer and second hand buyer essentially "split" the cost of new...

It is intellectual property, though, and if game developers decide to make an EULA that explicitly prohibits the resale of the game used I suspect they could do so and put EB Games/Gamestop out of business (at least in used)... In intellectual property, the seller grants use under certain conditions and they can vary quite a bit.

[Eclipticus]

my ony suggestion is, to make better quality games, that buyers want to keep and replayI have bought and rebought games, simply because i wanted to keep and replay them. otherwise, used games end up at a friends, or tossed. Make better quality games. and maybe less people will trade theirs in.

[travelguy2k]

on trade and gave you a credit towards a new purchase that would be fine with me. Then they just take that copy out of circulation. Kills the resale market but also promotes new sales. Give the retailer a little piece of the action for doing it.

I live in Mexico and right now i can take my 60gig Ps3 and get over $400 USD for it on trade at Blockbuster. It may sound good but a PS3 here is $600 min. - $800 for the good one. They were $1000 at launch in march.

I have taken the liberty to do the conversion from pesos to dollars. at around 10.5:1

[Hagaf22]

make games good enough that people buy them new and they wont have to worry, and stop delaying games all the time. oh yeah and shut down video game rental places too cuz theyre at fault too!!...stupid...

[Quickstrike]

1) the game developers have little right to say what the stores does. If they don't like a store buying and selling games then don't send games to that store.

2) but at the same time the stores need to send some of the profit they make from pre owned games to game developers so that they can continue to exist.

[lawman1108]

I have all of the systems and outside of the must have now (Halo3, Orange box Mass effect ect) I NEVER pay $60.00 for a game just on General Principal. Unless that game is going to turn into a solid gold disc NO game is worth $60 bucks.

[Twizlex]

I mostly agree with this. There are some games that I just can't wait to play and firmly believe it's worth the extra money to play it right away, but that's pretty rare - like two to three games a year. Most of the time I look for good deals on eBay. I got The Darkness for $37 brand new only 2 weeks after it released.

People who trade in their games to Gamestop/EB are the real idiots. They give you 20-30 bucks for a game you just bought there yesterday, and then more idiots buy the used copy for a mere $5 in savings. If I'm going to go to a brick-and-mortar store and buy a game, it's well worth 5 measly dollars to get it brand new. And if I'm absolutely done with a game, I'd sell it on eBay for double the price Gamestop will give me. Anybody that buys games and then trades them in a week later for less than half their money back is a moron. If that's how you play games, you should just stop buying altogether and get a Gamefly subscription.

[stevenhiggster]

Definately agree there, the only way they can stop the roaring trade on pre owned games is to make them cheaper in the first place, there are some games I do want, just not enough to spend £50 on them, if they were £30 I would prob buy them brand new.

[rbanke]

car, furniture, electronics, computers, houses, etc etc etc are all sold secondhand. 'it's bizzare that our industry tolerates it' Remember, consumers allow your industry to exist, trying to milk money out of consumers again on something you allready made money on is not a wise idea. This is yet another downside to digital distribution, you loose your freedom to decide what to do with the item you purchase. Digital distribution helps almost entirely the business, with little benefit for the consumer.

[Jinxstar]

Its just this time were in. A year or 2 down the line it wont matter. Dev's and Publishers right now aren't making the money they were with the PS2. Paying more money to make games and making less off them. When more people break down and buy new systems I bet it wont matter.

[Kyrue]

If they want in on the second hand profits, then they should get off their asses and sell their own used games. It's like they want a free hand out for doing nothing.

[ben806]

i have two core games that i will not trade in, gears of war and halo 3 if developers want more money they should make their games so i never want to trade them in.

[tk]

I have a PS3. I bought around 10 PS2 titles - to play on the PS3. Reason? Well - not enough new PS3 titles, and also - the PS3 reader rocks. Games that don't work on the PS2 anymore due to scratches works fine on the PS3. Previously I would not touch a pre-owned PS2 game - now I buy lots - at bargain basement prices. Around 25% of their original price - knowing they will work fine on the PS3.

And this may also be a reason behind the BC removed from the 40GB unit. PS3 titles must compete with rock bottom priced pre-owned PS2 titles. Heck - I can buy about 5 PS2 titles for the price of a single PS3 title.

Many PS3 owners most probably do the same - because the PS3 is such a robust DVD reader. It does not scratch the disks, read old scratched disks perfectly, and the BC on the Euro model is good enough that I could shelve the PS2.

With the 40GB model without BC you will only be able to buy PS3 titles - taking away the competition from the cheap pre-owned PS2 titles - that still rock.

From a marketing point I think I can now understand Sony's move to remove the PS2 BC. It was killing PS3 software sales - which it did not need.

The PS2 is still the biggest rental market out there - and since they play on the PS3 - this further dents the new sales market.

But well - titles like Uncharted, Haze, R&C, EOJ, MGS4, KZ2 will most probably be justification enough to own a 40GB PS3.

[bootsielon]

Seriously, why would you support game retailers more than game developers? Retailers make a lot of profit from used games, profit that requires little to no effort at all. In fact, retailers actually depend on that to live - which translates to them being leeches to the game industry.

I think it's funny that GameStop just reached 5000 stores... in a not so distant future, pretty much every game will be digitally delivered. What will they do then? I'll be glad to see them gone. Then again, I won't be able to see them gone... since I won't need to visit that place anymore, lol!

Don't misunderstand me; I'm all for cheap games. And that's why I'm against the selling of used games. Why should someone pay LESS than I paid for the same game when the MSRP is still the same? That's unfair. Games could be cheaper. And that's why with digital distribution and unified gamertags and friends lists, there'll be no choice to for leeches except to evolve; and that will mean they'll have to get their own gamertag too.

I know Microsoft's Xbox LIVE's gamertags are a rip-off, but that's another subject and is no justification for the selling of used games...

[Twizlex]

I agree that retailers like Gamestop are ripping people off with the whole used game bit, but it's not their fault but the fault of the idiots that support that practice. I'm actually very much NOT looking forward to digital distribution because there would be no competition, and no competition would equal you paying whatever price they decide to charge. Look at games like Lumines on XBLA that are a total ripoff. The only way you could EVER get that game cheaper, even a year after release, is if they decide to lower the price. You can't borrow a friend's copy, you can't buy it on eBay. They would essentially have a monopoly on their own games, and there would be no choice for you but to either pay what they demand or don't play their games, and that sucks. Gamefly and Blockbuster and all rental shops would go out of business because of it. There are some games that I enjoyed playing, but they were nowhere near worth the price of buying the full game. People should have that choice.

[UltramanJ]

I understand developers being upset about this, but what workaround is there? If I buy a game it's my game, and if I choose to sell it the I have every right to.
I feel kind of bad for the developers losing money to used game sales, but that's just the way it is. Perhaps a new rule should go into effect for stores like Gamestop in that used copies of a new release can't go one sale until at least 3 months after it's release? That way people who can't wait will run out and buy the new copy, and the used game market won't impact new game sales as much.

[Peenutt]

This is why I never buy a pre-own. After I read an article a while ago from PSM on the profits that hits the store vs. the developers I stopped buying them and just went straight for the new. If I liked a game so much that I can't wait to get it after reading so much about it, checking all the video feeds on it, and drooling over the pics I see in the mags then I want to support the developer and show them how much I’m going to like his/her game. Now if I was going to buy a pre-owned version of the game then the dev wouldn't know the profits of his/her game and I just might not see a sequel (hens they might not even know of how well it sold) So I never pick up a pre-own anymore. If you know that ur going to like a game such as uncharted then show ur support and buy it new. These stores new what there doing when you show up and u ask for that game and they say how about a pre-own and selling you a game that’s only 9$ cheaper and only giving some of us poor saps only 7-10$ (store credit) back for that 60$ game. Now thats a rip right there. (This comment is mostly directed at a ps3 trade-in value.)

[JokesOnYou]

when speaking specifically about intellectual property 99.99% of all the value is in the content/data on the disc, the disc itself is worthless. Dev's have every right to be upset because Game stores are purposely robbing them, yes as a consumer once you buy a game that disc its yours so by law you can sale it if you like, Game stores understand this law and use it very well to their advantage because they know full well there is a market for this "shady" second hand game sales= gamers who want to sell a game they're finished with to re-coupe money, most likely for another game and gamers who dont want to pay full price= yes its sounds like a win win for everybody right?= NO, not for dev's because in the end they LOOSE UNIT SALES because despite the bs you might hear about how used copies means people who would have never brought the game will NOW BUY IT because they can re-sale it later, the bottom line of essentially 2 or more gamers PLAYING THE SAME GAME AND SPLITTING THE COST, as mentioned in #6,= less total sales for a game that otherwise would like have sold more so I disagree with you kn, because 2 or more people playing the same game for half the cost will never translate to a higher profit (unit sales) than that which the dev would of made if game stores were not allowed to resale intellectual property(GAMES)

Now again here is the key difference between IP's and Cars= OK lets say for instance Ford designs a new car model and produces 1 mil of them for sale, they set the MSRP for each individual car to make a pre-existing profit goal based on how much money they spent on R&D, Advertising, and actual cost of manufacturing, labor, parts etc to produce each car.= once each of those 1 mil cars are sold (the 1st time) Ford will have made a profit off that car model. Cars are much more longterm sales oriented, this example is oversimplified but thats generally how it works. As for videogames again almost all of the costs are associated with the dev process, the devs need the game to sell well to a large quantity of people to re-coupe their investment, unlike car sales where all of those 1 mil cars that come off the production line have to be sold to at least 1 mil users before they can be used, devs however get short changed because they may only see 200k sales even though 300k to 400k might actually get to play the game, for an IP thats a significant desparity in end users vs units sold, which means those second hand sales account for significant percent of loss in profit margins for developers.= Game prices and game related content continue to rise and the vicious cycle continues.=

JOY