News Pre-owned games blamed for falling sales

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2010/06/28/pre-owned-games-blamed-for-falling-sales/1

 

Although im sure the second hand market is slightly affecting sales, imo it is more likely the fact that most new games are crap and way overpriced.

 

Completely agree.

But the games industry, just like the movie one, will never admit.

 

I agree. If anything it's the companies faults for making prices of full priced games too high.
Although i don't buy pre-owned games, i do buy new games that have been out for several months, at which point their price is slashed anyway.
Maybe some sort of compromise is in order, whereby companies offering pre-owned games give a percentage of the profit (made by buying the games for less), to the companies?

 

I'll often by a pre-owned game over a full price title except when it's a new must have title.

It just doesn't make sense paying over the odds for the sake of having a new shiney box when a well looked after pre-owned copy does the same job.

 

How does that explain the success of Steam store?

Excuse fail.

 

I'm all for getting rid of the second hand market. Free to play with micro transactions, or game streaming tech, or project $10, or online passes will take care of this.

 

Lower prices to compete with pre-owned market
???
Profit

 

I never buy second hand games, and I can appreciate how it damages the industry (none of the profits of the second hand market are returned to the gaming industry)

I can think of a couple of ways to counter.

Firstly as DaraganuvHUN states above - lower prices - i buy most of my games on steam in sales, because the value us outstanding.

Secondly - perhaps the games industry should try and get involved themselves - the big publishers could offer some form of trade- in scheme.

 

Do they not think that the fact that games for this generation are higher priced then the last generation and the fact that most people are worst off those days (I know I am) are factors in the drop in sales.

 

Why *should* the gaming industry get a cut from 2nd hand sales? They've made their money when they sold the game to the original purchaser. The publisher doesn't get any money if I (say) donate a book, or anything else, to a charity shop for resale either!

 

I can see some of these brand new games not selling at all if they keep bolting on stupid anti-second-hand measures like this.

As said above, the content of new games compared to the older games is appalling, and I know for one I'm worse off because of this recession we're in that wasn't around in 2003...

 

Here we go again.....This gets really old.....

 

Fine. I don't care that much frankly... there's no way I'm paying more than £25 for *any* game, so if they want me to buy new rather than pre-owned then they'll have to charge me £25.

Want more? No problem, but I'm not buying your games.

 

Well when you sell a car second hand the car company gets a cu... oh wait...

 

if i could right now i would of sold my copy of MW2 right now (i should of made my new account just for MW2 so i could of sold it later on)

my own fault for buying it on my main stream account when i knew i was not going to like the game, multilayer shot lag sucks and makes th game unplayable, mite be acceptable under an console but not under PC

 

They should make a game good enough and price it sensibility enough so that it sells well in the first place.

I am sure that second, third, forth, fifth, sixth (etc) hand car sales hurt new car sales but there is no reason that BMW etc should get any money from a second hand sale.

 

Well I don't know where anyone else gets their pre-owned games. Aside from the PS2 stuff it is all over-priced, sometimes even more than the new games!

Besides which if game shops don't sell pre-owned, they might not make enough profit to justify hanging around. Do you really want to kill off your salespeople? Maybe it's a "loss" that is better taken in the long run?

As a PC gamer I can't afford to upgrade to a new £200 graphics card just to play a new game in the middle of a recession, so I'm not really buying many games at the moment. The first one I got all year has been in the Steam summer sale. Get creative game sellers or lose the money to other entertainment providers!

 

I really don't get the games industry's problem with the second-hand market - every other industry has it (just look at FleaBay) and you don't hear any of them running around shouting "OMFG! We're being ripped off by second-hand sales! It's evil and it's killing us!"

After all, the business model should include ongoing costs associated with the product - writing patches, supporting multiplayer and so on. It doesn't make any difference whether the product has changed hands or not because the support costs will be the same regardless of the end-user.

You could argue that second-hand sales prolong the lifetime of a product, which is true to a certain extent, but I can't imagine that it would be by any significant amount and most games would be supported for at least a couple of years after launch anyway. I can't believe that the second-hand market significantly increases that time.

tl;dr summary:
No other industry moans about losing sales to the second-hand market; the games industry should shut up and stop trying to stifle the second-hand games market and just accept it like any other industry does.

To games publishers: it's not illegal, it doesn't (shouldn't) cost you significantly more to support, so just live with and stop whining.

 

You don't see car companies going on about the second hand market, and that's because they embraced it.

Why don't they do what the car industry does and setup they own second hand distribution channels.

Think about if EA offered to buy back old games and give you credit for other EA games and they could also sell the second hand games and ensure that people only bought EA games.