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Publishers Frustrated With Second-Hand Sales
Via Joystiq, a look at MCV into the increasing frustration publishers have with second-hand game sales. From the article: "As pressure has increased this year on sell-through and pricing of new
releases, so games publishers have become more sensitive about the size of
the pre-owned market - which is believed to be worth as much as £50m a year to leading chain GAME and possibly £100m across the market as a whole. Publishers have agreed to discuss privately what action may be possible to stop the trend, either under the auspices of trade body ELSPA or simply via legal protection." We've already reported on Epic VP Mark Rein's opinion on reselling games.
Publishers have agreed to discuss privately what action may be possible to stop the trend, either under the auspices of trade body ELSPA or simply via legal protection.
"Our business model isn't as profitable as it could be, let's outlaw competing with us!"
Isn't the point of capitalism that you're supposed to fix that yourself instead of bribing a politician to do it for you? The software industry already has a lot of special rights that should have been taken away long ago (beginning with that "it's not a sale, it's a license" crap), they don't need more.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
> frustration publishers have with second-hand game sales.
If you'd make a DECENT GAME to start with, I wouldn't want to sell it.
So... they're frustrated that they can't make more money?
Well, damn, we have a lot in common.
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
This is ridiculous. You don't see car manufacturers trying to stop people selling second hand cars.
These people need to get it through their thick heads that once you've sold something to me, it becomes my property. You can't have it both ways. If you offer something for sale, then give it to me in exchange for money, then it's mine. And if it's mine, then it's mine to sell.
And don't give me any bullshit about "selling me a license". Do you say "buy a license NOW!" in adverts? Does the box say "License to play Gran Turismo" on it, or does it say "Gran Turismo"? You are selling the game, not a license.
You really want to make people stop selling second hand games? Fine. There's a legal way of doing that. Make them sign a contract when they buy it. That'll stop people selling second-hand. Why? Because they won't buy it in the first place, you eejits!
Now I'm a Linux user and much more willing to shell out that kind of money if the game is good and has native Linux support, so there's one angle you could persue. ;) [thank you for UT2004, NWN, Doom3, and Quake4, amongst others!]
Unfortunately, I suspect "prevention" has much more to do with screwing the customers over (Even Better CD Checks and Licensing! Whoo! Just what I wanted--new ways for things to break so that I can't play the games I purchased from you [the CD check has to be the #1 reason I cannot play a game]!) than listening to the customers.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Through the sale of their second hand games fans can afford to buy new games.
If you stifle second hand game sales you also stifle new game sales with the same stroke.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
As I see it, they have two viable solutions to their "problem" 1.) Make games that are good enough that people will want to hang on to them or 2.) Keep putting out new material so you don't have to rely on the sales of old titles. If you put out half-assed attempts at games, people are going to resell them. If the game isn't worth the $50 they bought it for, they are going to try to recoup their losses by making some of that money back.
for under $20 total off ebay (shipped). Onimusha, Auto modellista, Tekken Tag Tournament and Omega Boost. Sure, they're a little long in the tooth, but they're still great games.
The real problem as I see it is the console manufactures (Sony et al) have been dragging their feet too long on this generation. The latest stuff just isn't that much better then the backlog of games. It doesn't help when big name titles like Soul Calibur III aren't any better than their predessesors.
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Game makers need to understand that they themselves are to blame for the impact of used games on their sales. It's the same situation as with music and film: Overpriced shitty product. Bottom line: They need to lower the prices.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I am not a hardcore gamer. Two or three times a month I'll fire up the X Box and play for a few hours. I enjoy games like the Call To Duty series, or Ghost Recon 2. Buying these games new at $50-$60 doesn't make sense to me. I'm more than happy to pay $15-$20 at the mall for a used game. The few times I have paid the $50-$60 cost of a new game, I've deeply regretted it and won't let it happen again.
If new games were in the $20-$25 range, I'd have a lot more games (and probably play more often).
Now the real question is, are there enough guys like me out there to justify charging half as much for the game to make the profit on volume?
And how much less will resellers have to charge for a used game at that point? Is it even worth it for them to sell used games at $10?
It's a service. As long as game producers continue to think of games as products they will continue to be befuddled by a market that wont pay the rates that they feel they must charge to keep up. Get people involved and paying for your game developement early, and continue having them pay while they play it. It wont take a large amount of money and updates wont feel like wasted time. Bug fixes will be expected and there never will be a "gold" version... you'll just keep making it better.
If coporations have their way pretty soon it will be illegal to buy anything second-hand. Heck I'm surprised eBay is even still legal.
Is to make games people want to keep. Nintendo's publicly discussed this for a while now, so I can't help but wonder why these other companies haven't picked up on it. Are they worried that they don't know how to do that?
Or maybe EA's just wants their practice of dumping yearly sports franchise revisions to be supported by retailers, despite the obvious used game trend it creates.
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This is not the issue is the gamer selling the game. It's the retail outlets pushing sales on used games instead of new games. This means when a customer comes into the store, the store will push them to buy a used copy of Gran Turismo 4, instead of the new copy (which is nearly always only a fraction of savings for the customer anyhow, but almost 100% profit for the store).
This causes the publisher to lose out on a sale for every used copy of the game sold. The game could be the best one made ever, with every gamer intending to buy a copy in the first place, but it won't sell well enough to keep the publisher afloat if the majority of the sales on it are used.
Granted this requires a lot of gamers to sell their copies in the first place, but I can kind of see where the publisher is coming from in this regard.
Either way, resorting to legal action and the whole "you're buying a license, not a game" crap is quite stupid, so I hope it doesn't come to that. My personal fear is that we're going to resort to locking down games to only play on one system and never run again on a different one (it's been discussed), or games actually degrading in quality over time forcing used copies to display their age after they've been played previously. Then we're just enforcing a superficial limitation on the digital medium, which is a smaller part of the overall digital copyright issue in the first place (falsly limiting otherwise limitless resources under the pretense of actual, lost material wealth).
Think of it this way:
If you could sell 100 games at $60 or 150 games at $30, which would you choose?
Right. People would have to buy twice as many games for that system to work. I don't see that happening, so we have the current system.
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Game manufacturers stop selling older titles. If I want to purchase one how am I supposed to do that without buying a used title from someone else?
If they want these new laws maybe there should be some more laws created that force them to keep every title they've ever produced available for purchase.
If they claim to be "licensing" the games instead of "selling" them won't there be consequences? The tax laws are different since the company still "owns" the product. Also there should be more warranty -- if the media (cd/dvd/whatever) gets scratched the company should have to replace it (since I've purchased the right to use the product).
Invalid Checksum. Retrying.
Uh... I wouldn't pay for something like that. But then that's why I play console games, I guess. I can buy a nice title, bring it home, and get a good many hours of enjoyment out of it, no updating/upgrading/bug-fixing necessary.
I understand that life's not fair, just why is it never unfair in my favor?
Yes. And they do: when console games hit a certain rate of penetration, the Big Three turn them over to "Platinum" status, slash the System Licensing cost to a few bucks, and let the publisher re-release the game at that magic price-point of 20-25 bucks.
Is it worth it for them to do this with new games? Hell no. Market research demonstrates that casual gamers such as yourself almost never know when a new game is coming out anyway, don't read the magazines where those dates are advertised, and don't frequent the websites that hype them (although, since you're reading Slashdot Games, you might be less "casual" than you'd like to believe). So releasing a new title at a lower price point doesn't gain the publisher anything: they can release it at full price, wait while your hardcore friends play it and tell you how great it is, and by the time you decide to see what the fuss is about, the price is already in the sweet spot.
And if your gaming friends aren't playing it and telling you how great it is? Then you probably wouldn't buy it even if it was $20 on launch day.
This second-stage of a console game's life is extremely profitable for the publisher: sales volume typically goes way up. But it doesn't work with new games. I was at Atari when they considered releasing a title at a $25 price point for launch: the problem is that hardcore gamers see this as a sign that the game isn't good (not because we released it cheap, but because they hadn't heard much about it and, seeing it at that price point, presume it's been on shelves for months and wasn't selling), and casual gamers don't hear about it from hardcore gamers, so they don't give it a second glance. It's not impossible, mind. But it doesn't usually pay off.
Yeah and when someone steals your entire library, forget about getting help from them in getting it all replaced. In fact, there are a number of titles in my library that got stolen that aren't available new anymore, and some on top of that are rare in the secondhand library... the two Playstation Lunar games, for example
Like anything else, it's worth exactly as much as someone is prepared to pay for it.
This isn't entirely without precedent, by the way (see Chris Kohler's Power-Up for a commentary; I'd summarise it if I had my copy to hand, which, alas, I don't), although I'm not aware of any U.K. precedent.
Uh... I wouldn't pay for something like that. But then that's why I play console games, I guess. I can buy a nice title, bring it home, and get a good many hours of enjoyment out of it, no updating/upgrading/bug-fixing necessary.
And if it's broken.... then what do you do?
And even for people who are willing to spend $50 on a game, not everyone is able to spend that much at once all the time. If someone was going to buy a $25 used game, they now have to wait until they've got another $25... And in that time, they might decide they are just better off borrowing it from a friend or renting it.
Of course, I have no idea how I'd get SNES games, seeing as how no one rents them anymore, and you can't even get them used except on eBay.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
1) Make a better game that someone is proud to keep in their library, either to loan to a friend for a weekend or to replay at a later time, perhaps on a more difficult setting.
2) Offer trade-ins: EB, Gamestop, Rhino, et al employ a large number of people and they make a good deal of money off second-hand games. Also, other establishments make an extra $10 or so taking games as trade for other merchandise and then reselling them later.
Institute some sort of voucher system. Let's use Nintendo as a hypothetical. Say for example a customer purchased Pikmin 2, beat the game fairly quickly, and had no desire to keep it in his collection any longer. If Nintendo had a system where the purchaser could send the game back to Nintendo for coupon for any future Nintendo media purchase. Nintendo could then evaluate the state of the game, repackage it (if the package has been stained, or damaged) and then resolicit it at a discounter price to a specialty electronics vendor with a seal saying it has passed inspection.
The game looks new, plays as well as a new one (not having scratches, smudges, etc.) and is certified by the company.
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Then you either unload it and take the loss(good luck, or you could have done your research/rented first so you would have know before hand. Console game maker have learnt over the years broken games don't sell as well.
Then you either unload it and take the loss(good luck, or you could have done your research/rented first so you would have know before hand. Console game maker have learnt over the years broken games don't sell as well.
And computer game makers have learned that if they continue to evolve a game after launch, it's audience grows. Allow the audience to affect the game, and it fan base grows even faster.
Patronage. Pay for the right to have the game you really want.
you'll have to pry my copy of Valkyrie Profile out of my Cold, Dead Hands. But the next Tekken? I'll pick it up for $5 bucks off ebay.
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For this Joe Consumer, it's just money. I just don't see the value of a 50-60 dollar game. Don't get me wrong, I've done it, and games are my number one past time. However, I'd rather buy five year-old games at $15 a pop then one game (that may or may or may not be good) at $49.99.
Give me a 15 hour game at twenty bucks and I'm good. If you gain a good rep with me, I'll buy your 40 hour 49.99 game (Looking at you, my delicious PSP GTA:LCS).
-- I have fans? Wow.
Some solutions?
- Charge a monthly fee. Everyone's doing it.
- Trade-ins. Mail your discs back to the publisher and get $10 off the next installment. If the disc works, sell it as a Greatest Hit. If it doesn't, toss it in the dump.
- Sony-style DRM. This will lead to wide-spread modding (like this isn't already the case with Xbox and PS2), or instant console death.
- Make games that people want to keep, and don't sweat it when stuff gets traded around. Try and pick up Gameboy Tetris, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Ocarina of Time, Mario 64 or even Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door or Wario Ware: Mega Party Game$. Okay, eBay, sure, but they are pretty dang hard to find.
I buy way more console games than PC games because it's just so easy to trade games around temporarily. Just find a group of friends with the same consoles, then coordinate your purchases. "Alright, you get Super Mario Strikers and I'll get Double Dash... Then you can lend me Resident Evil 4 for next month and you can borrow Viewtiful Joe." Games are being purchased, developers are making money... what's the problem?The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
I see no way that the publishers can get around this.
At the exteme end of it, they wont stop garage sales, or me selling a used game to a friend.
Also, Electronics Boutique (or whatever they are called since the merger with Gamestop) makes money off of this. And EB is a key retailer for games.
The only long term viable way for the publishers to stop this is to stop selling physical media versions of their games, and require that the console be connected to centrally located servers and stream the games. While I think that on demand gaming may come about, I dont expect many gamers to go for this arrangement, unless the service is lightning fast and error free. Some people enjoy replaying games, and wont want to repurchase a game they bought in full a few years ago just to replay it.
END COMMUNICATION
one point i haven't seen noted is that if new games cost $25-30 bucks, then trade in value on them would be minimal, and used cost would probably not be a whole lot lower than new, if the difference between a used and new copy of the game is $5 wouldn't you just grab the new one? also, if games were at a lower price-> trade in value is lower -> it might be more worthwhile for gamers to hold on to that game for the few times they'll fire it up to play than to take a $3 trade value for it.
With the typical assumptions, part of the value of a game is the ability to resell it. A rational consumer may only be willing to buy a $60 game knowing that he can sell it back for the equivalent of $20. Otherwise his initial price point might only be $40.
Similarly the publisher might only be willing to sell a game for $40 if it knows that the game will not be resold in a way that will stifle an average of $20 of original sales. Otherwise it might only be willing to sell the game for $60.
So it's not entirely clear to me what advantage publishers think they will get from banning resales. If they think customers are willing to pay the same amount for less benefit -- that is, a game with no resale value -- why don't they just increase the price of the game instead of lobbying for legislation?
Sounds to me like this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
Does anyone else think it's a little ironic for someone who built a game company on the shareware model to years later be the one of the most outspoken partisans against game consumer rights?
I won't ever buy a Steam game again. UNLESS I'm absolutely sure I'd never want to sell it, or it's so cheap I wouldn't bother reselling it.
Needless to say, I only know this because I wanted to sell HL2. Fool me once, Valve...
I've noticed charity shops (thrift stores) in the UK making similar mistakes and most are now charging quite a high price for their stuff, with books going for up to 2 pounds (4 dollars) instead of 20p (~50 cents).
I've only got so much money in my pocket to spend when I pop into a charity shop, I don't magically get more money because the prices have gone up. Instead I start to compare prices with publishers outlets and things and end up spending less money in the charity shop - I don't know whether or not the strategy works out well for the shop overall.
I'm not "complaining" just pointing out that charity shops hardly get any of my money these days.
(For me charity shops are a purely commercial experience, I don't like to mix charity giving with buying from charity shops)
As for ganes, I'm short on time. Battlefield2 goes for around 25 UKP, I hae a copy a friend gave me (he didn't have the time to play it), and having played it I can see that I would want to buy it, and at that price I would linge at the boundary for a log time, so I am glad it was given to me.
I still only have time to play battlefield2 for a couple of hours a month and thats what makes modern games hard to value, the time it takes to get your moneys worth.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
>And if it's broken.... then what do you do?
Return it to the store for a refund? Like with everything else I buy that is broken. Of course, the store can decide to fix it for me instead, either way works for me.
Hey now, the Resident Evil books are rather decent. Granted I bought them used from ebay, but that doesn't mean that simply putting the stories into print is an underhanded dealing.
I've been personally boycotting EB/Gamestop. While I do think it is unfair to the publishers that they sell used games, that's not the reason. My reason is that it is nearly impossible to find a new copy of the game you're looking for. I shouldn't need a store employee, a map, and a member of the K-9 unit to find a new copy of a game released three weeks ago.
Games aren't like most consumer goods that are sold.
If you have a car, you use it for as long as you need it. You will want to have access to it permanently. The same is true with furnature.
I can't imagine someone saying "hey, this chair, do you wan't to buy it off me? I've been sitting exclusively on this one chair for weeks, and am a bit bored of it. But think I can safely say I got my money's worth"
But with games, it's commonplace. They offer fun for a limited amount of time, and many people are ready to spend 60 bucks on the experience.
But when they've done with it, they have no reason keeping it, and sell it on to someone who might have spent 60 bucks on it too, but would rather get it for half that.
Games just have a different value than most things we know. Most use-once-and-fun-is-over items we know can't be resold, such as food.
And it just isn't possible to make all games must-keep-will-always-keep-playing.
For publishers, it isn't a big difference if the games are sold used or pirated.
I believe it's one of the big reasons CERO is saying that the games market in Japan is shrinking. It's a bigger problem than people think.
I hope this isn't too redundant:
In other words, would dcutting the price a product in half cause the said product to sell more than twice as much?
It sounds similar to this problem:
One time an accountant was complaining that he had too many customers and couldn't do all their work in time. It was then suggested that he double his rates, so he did and lost half his clients, yet somehow not any money.
The moral is that pricing is dependant on the supply and demand. The accountant's supply is his time, and the game's supply is the number of discs and packaging that can be made at a given price.
If they sold games at a lower price, and sold more volume, the cost to manufacture each disc would go down. So they may not even need to double sales to maintain the same revenue.
I keep wondering why games that take 4 hours to finish cost just as much as epic games that people still play today. Looks a lot like price fixing. (Thank you 2K sports for selling cheap sports games on the xbox, and practically the same games on the 360 for double!)
Up until a few years ago, it was illegal to sell used games in Japan. If you have an imported game from this period it's likely it will have a NO RESALE icon on the back. A Japanese court decided it was illegal to do this, but it took an act of Parliament to actually reverse it (their legal system does not have precedent).
The system failed in Japan because it was against consumer rights.
Melissa
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
What these people are talking about is fucking with the Free Market and Property Rights. They might as well be communists and treated accordingly.
I usually go into EB looking for something cheap in the bargain bin, but while I'm there I'll scan the racks of new games and occasionally purchase one, thinking I'd rather be playing one good new game I know I'll like rather than getting 2-3 old games that might be not very fun and waiting months and months for that new game to get cheaper.
I'm thinking about buying a PS3 and playing a lot of used PS2 games I've missed out on, or screw the PS3 and just get PS2 maybe there'll be another price reduction after the PS3 comes out.
If there were no used games market I probably wouldn't be playing or buying any games at all.
If you are depressed by the fact that your product has a second-hand value, move into the drinks industry.
We don't buy Game X based on whether or not it's used, we buy it because we want to play Game X! If it's not in the New Releases section anymore, not produced, not shipping, and not sold new, how the heck else are we to acquire it?
... because thanks to a german consumer association, if you have bought a retail box of HL2, you no more have to pay Valve the infamous "$10 resell tax". Strangely, this move from Valve has made little publicity.
But if you only have a Steam version of HL2, well you are out of luck. You need to realise you haven't bought any game, but merely pay some subscription fees to access an overhyped content on some buggy and restrictive online service. So technically, you have pretty much nothing to resell. Did you say the advertisement was unclear?
If I had to pay 50 bucks a copy, there'd be 5 games on the shelf.
Mark me down as a resale advocate then. (Even though I have NEVER Sold a game.)
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If they want to make money from re-sales, they should set up the stores themselves. Square-Enix Used Games. That sort of thing.
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At least at stores like EB and gamestop the new release second hand games sell for a whole $5 off the price of new. And for that $5 off you get inevitably the worlds most scratched up games. I have bought about a total of 6 used games and 3 of them did not work and I had to take them back. My time of dealing with the hastle is worth more to me than the $5 savings. For older games the price difference is a bit more, but then the games are more likely to be destroyed. I will never know how people get there disks so damaged.