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Used Game Market Affecting Price, Quality of New Titles
Gamasutra is running a feature discussing the used game market with various developers and analysts. The point has been raised by many members of the industry that used game sales are hurting developers and publishers even more lately, when they're already beleaguered by rising piracy rates and a struggling economy. Atari executives recently commented that used game sales are "extremely painful," while GameStop's CEO unsurprisingly came out in support of resales. We've recently discussed a few of the ways game designers are considering to limit used game sales. David Braben, chairman of UK-based developer Frontier Development had this to say: "Five years ago, a great game would have sold for a longer period of time than for a bad game — which was essentially our incentive to make great games. But no longer. Now publishers and developers just see revenue the initial few weeks regardless of the game's quality and then gamers start buying used copies which generates money that goes into GameStop's pocket, nobody else's."
AHOY!
In other news, used car sales are hurting car manufacturers even more lately, when they're already beleaguered by rising petrol prices and a struggling economy. Ford executives recently commented that used car sales are "extremely painful," while eBay's CEO unsurprisingly came out in support of resales. David Braben, chairman of UK-based car manufacturer Frontier Development had this to say: "Five years ago, a great car would have sold for a longer period of time than for a bad car â" which was essentially our incentive to make great cars. But no longer. Now manufacturers just see revenue the initial few weeks regardless of the car's quality and then gamers start buying used cars which generates money that goes into eBay's pocket, nobody else's."
We should bail out the game industry?
After all, if it goes under, we'll get a lot of people, who spend hours gaming, not gaming anymore. This means less soda and junk food to snack on, which in turn, means the junk food industry will be hurt, which, in turn, means more layoffs.
Rubbish games don't sell the first time arround.
If making a game is always resulting in a loss, it wouldn't make any sense ( business or otherwise ) to continue making games.
Therefore, I can only conclude that making a game is *still* profitable ( despite everything ) and would just like to say:
Be happy you are making profit and stop whining about how much.
That goes for **AA too!
The disappearing pencil trick. Let me show you it.
If it makes them feel any better...I have never bought or sold a used game. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of my purchases in the past year have been digital. That does come at the cost that I only buy good games from companies that treat me properly.
Beyond that..of course it effects prices. That being said, you can't do anything about it. Once purchased, the game is mine to sell. The best (for them, that is) thing to do is to abandon singleplayer and focus on subscription and account based games. I'd be devastated though. You already took away KOTOR 3, don't take away ME2 and whatever else you can think of.
That's what this is. They want a piece of the pie. Anyone who buys into this idea is an idiot. No one is going to pay $60 for a shitty game.
that the used game market is affecting price and quality, my first response is GREAT! Market forces at work are driving new game prices down and quality up as developers are forced to compete with a robust substitute good: the used game.
Then I realize its more of the same FUD campaign put on by the mega-corporations to prep us for invasive mechanisms inserted into games with the end goal of bilking us for more $$$. I think I'll avoid supporting this industry and stick to indie games until they have an attitude shift.
...yes yes, its all ther nasty consumers fault! You bundle crapware drm and we don't buy it, uhuh, thats my fault. You release the game for £50-60 quid, and somehow, especially in the current economic crisis, I find that I'd rather pay for food and shelter over GENERICFIFASPORTGAME-2009. Im even more evil for thinking that second hand at £20-30, I might just be able to afford it without sending you more money after its first sale.
Oh, I also apologize when i decide not to buy your £50 game, because you decided you could, infact, split it into 3 seperate games and sell it that way for more than £100, for pure greed (Hi Starcraft2!). Im so very sorry. Also, do forgive me when i refuse to buy your game at all, because you decided that buying the game second hand means im njot entitled to the full game, because I also decided you weren't worthy to survive as a games company anymore (GOW2).
And "Five years ago, a great game would have sold for a longer period of time than for a bad game-- which was essentially our incentive to make great games. But no longer. Now publishers and developers just see revenue the initial few weeks regardless of the game's quality and then gamers start buying used copies which generates money that goes into GameStop's pocket, nobody else's."
No Im sorry, games just aren't as good as they were, because I recall buying and trading in games for second hand games more than 5 years ago. So that hasn't changed, must be the games eh?
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
i use the money i get from selling my used games to... omg, your not ganna believe this...
buy new games!
holy shit on stick!
slap me thrice and hand me to me mamma!
the technology that we use to play these games has improved greatly over the past 5 years. so why aren't the games that are played on this hardware getting any better?
rather than bitch about how no one is buying your new games, start making good games that get me excited, so I want to go and buy them right away.
when you make a game that most likely sucks, i can't return, and infects my computer with another one of your DRM viruses, im not going to get all excited about it.
i still play red alert 2, unreal trournament, doom, a link to the past, etc, because those are great games that i enjoy playing.
start making games that are fun, and i will start buying. Or, you can recycle the crappy games from last year, throw in a few more polygons to make things pretty and go out of business.
-I only code in BASIC.-
Gamers don't give up copies of good games to used game stores. See how many copies of Goldeneye you will find. Additionally, if a game is great, people buy the game new so they can have it right away. Thus there is a small used game market for copies of that game.
I gave up on console games after I read an article about how 80% of computer games bought are never finished. I don't really have much time to spare on games any more and find my gaming needs are more than catered for by browser based flash games. (Then again my idea of the perfect gaming experience is an entertaining and only mildly taxing point and click adventure.)
Anyway, seems to me that spending so much time and energy on flare effects and 3D physics and primo voice talent and cinematic effects is draining the industry of money. But nobody can ever get enough of things like Tetris, sure you might get sick of it for a bit but one day... one day... you are looking at those old falling blocks and you can't resist one more rotate and slot.
You want to absorb the costs of the used games market? Or damage it? Stop making vapid eye candy people bore of in seconds. With all the spare budget you have finance the production of your new more playable, less sugar frosting games.
Pretty impresses for ten minutes. Substance makes something a keeper.
www.nodicerpg.com - Some RP stuff for free, some not so for free, but still cheap.
Two facts:
* The high price of game creates the 2nd hand market.
* The high price 2nd hand market helps people afford new games, by selling their old games.
Putting up the price of new games isn't going to change those facts, in fact it will raise the price of 2nd hand games making the market more lucrative and increasing the amount of trade in 2nd hand games.
Preventing games from being sold 2nd hand will reduce what buyers can afford for new games.
Folk only have so much money to spend on games, after all!
I used to regularly spend about 1 GBP ($2) a week at charity shops buying books at 10-20 pence each. (They'd go back to charity shops to be re-sold when I'd finished with them)
Then the shops went "up market" and started selling at 50p - 1 pound each and now they don't get any of my money at all.
Games industry is going the same way.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
I agree with the poster above... If you can't make a game with replay value don't complain your game gets resold.
and you won't have this problem affecting your revenue stream.
I think one should be asking what makes people want to trade in a game after just one week of ownership.
"Five years ago, a great game would have sold for a longer period of time than for a bad game â" which was essentially our incentive to make great games. But no longer. Now publishers and developers just see revenue the initial few weeks regardless of the game's quality and then gamers start buying used copies which generates money that goes into GameStop's pocket, nobody else's.""
And what do you do when the supply of used games runs out?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
"That's in addition to the fact that we don't see anything from the used-game sales, which is one reason why the price of new games throughout the industry remains artificially high," he says. "I mean, the industry has to make all its money from the first sale since we don't get a penny from the subsequent dozen or so sales of that same game."
Competition drives prices up!? Don't treat us like morons. If used sales went down why would they reduce the price? To make less money? I can see that being a great business strategy.
Why are resales so popular in the first place? Because games are really expensive and have a short life.
I'd also like to point out that while the observation that 80% of money from trade ins is spent on games is interesting, the car resale analogy is a little misleading. Cars are assets. They're purchased with the expectation of a certain level of depreciation. Games are to an extent but it's not nearly as big a factor in the purchase.
Excuse me, but I still prefer Mario Kart 64 to any title I've played on a newer console.
I mean DRM is killing the game industry, high prices are killing the industry, and crappy sequels are killing the game industry, but really most of the new games suck.
I still play Urban Terror (free), and Civilization 2, as well, because the newer versions suck and aren't fun.
I love how these megacorporations are killing innovation in every sector and then demanding government bailouts. WTF is going on here? Sell a decent product idiots!!!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Games have been getting crappier, so I won't buy them in the first place.
Books, CDs, movies... these are all forms of entertainment that lose a lot of their value once they've been viewed once. If game companies don't want people reselling games, they need to make some kind of incentive for people to hold onto their games, and make the gameplay actually enjoyable so that people keep the game to enjoy, rather than just to finish the single-player content once. Great examples of this are the Smash Bros. series and the Halo series. Both are enjoyable to play with friends (or online) after you've finished the single-player campaign. Things like XBox achievements do a lot to add replayability to games, but if the games aren't inherently fun, then even they can't save a game.
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
This is just plain fud. Being able to sell a game once you've played it increases the reason to buy it. Especially when the game is short, possibly bad or has no replayability value.
aka Gardener, aka ollej
The used market helps sell new games.
Some subset of early-adopter gamers are not going to buy new games at brand new prices unless they know they can turn around and sell the game to get back some of that value. This is especially true since early-adopter gamers are the ones taking the risk on the games. In this capacity, the used market actually helps you.
The used market is not the money factory you claim.
If there was truly so much money to be had in the used market you would drop your prices without hesitation in order to compete. If there was that much money you should have no problem making up for lowered prices with increased sales. The fact that you do not do this illustrates very clearly that there is not that much money being 'lost'.
David Braben, you are a remarkable idiot.
Not only have you stated that money is your "essential" motivation for creating great games - which leads me to wonder if your firm is capable of making a great game - but you have made it very clear that your firm has no incentive (read: plan) to create great games in the future.
Used car resales are also hurting the Big Three auto manufacturers. I'm waiting for them to lobby government to ban the resale of used cars in order to save the industry.
I for one never resell a game I really enjoy ... even if it's a play through game (e.g. Half Life 2) I'd still keep it around in case I want to replay it some day.
Sounds like the game industry's found another bogeyman to blame their problems on.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
I just stopped buying new games. I remember when I couldnt afford games, I would still try to get them new, used tended to be scratched or missing things. Oh and there was almost always a game I wanted.
In recent years, I've found very few games I actually want to buy. So I haven't bought them.
I only buy them used if I cant get them new because the GAME DEVELOPER has decided to stop selling them new. Oh but wait, that's their "right" that I can no longer buy their game, if they decide no one should play it any longer.
I must be a dirty pirate.
Thankfully there's not much out there worth buying and playing anymore. I have a wii that is collecting dust, and I play lots of tf2 and the other games in the orange box, and that has tided me over.
I wonder when they will start penalizing players for "overplaying" a game and cutting off access if they feel we have outplayed the value of the game.
That will be the next "crime" they will find the consumer committing.
Welcome to the gaming world according to Microsoft and EA.
OMG where losing so much money because of .
we need to do something to fix it now.
"David Braben, chairman of UK-based developer Frontier Development had this to say: "Five years ago, a great game would have sold for a longer period of time than for a bad game â" which was essentially our incentive to make great games. But no longer."
So, David, you're essentially stating that you don't care if the games you make are good or bad ... just as long as you get the greenbacks for them?
Shame on you. Have you no pride in making good games?
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
-low replay value
-short games
Many RPG games, I was not able to finish in a few weeks. The first Metal Gear Solid on the original Playstation I never gave away, not because of the game, but after I beat that, I kept at the training exercises.
Although I cannot account for console games today, I play mostly flash games. Even pay for a few.
Just a little while ago, there was a /. article with the headline:
"Atari Purchases Cryptic Studios For $26.7 Million"
Now we hear:
"Atari executives recently commented that used game sales are "extremely painful"
Boo. Hoo.
Seriously, computers must be the only market where anyone pays attention to execs whining about used sales.
(Oh, wait--except for music and movies. Can we just blame Sony for all of this?)
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
ow publishers and developers just see revenue the initial few weeks regardless of the game's quality and then gamers start buying used copies
And where do those used games come from? Those high quality games, that people are going to keep playing for years, how did they get into the used game store a few weeks after release?
Maybe this is not really "regardless of the game's quality", but rather that NONE of the games you make have a replay value of more than a few weeks.
I've seen this trend and I'm getting sick of it. The market is getting flooded with poorer (if prettier) games that are most of the time with crippling DRM and incomplete and bug-ridden. I don't believe a for a second that the used games market is to blame for anything, it's the publishers and/or big companies. They start this frantic lockdown battle against a natural part of economy while truying to outmuscle consumer rights straight out of the window. They actually think something good will come out of just releasing crappy games in quick succession, just to grab the money they have never been getting. It's (almost) like saying that boat sales are killing the auto industry. No, this will lead to people abondoning the industry and its products completely. If only consoles were a solution.
Used games exist so deal with it. There are a lot of things that would affect how many people bought your games. If used games were outlawed then more people might buy games. If computers had hardware DRM that prevented any game from being played unless it phoned home to the game manufacturer, people might buy more games. If the government mandated that people buy at least 2 games a week, people would buy more games. That's not the world we're living in, so I guess the games industry has to do what everyone else has to do and cater to their existing customers. They're not entitled to protection for their business plans, and them saying that it's used games that's causing decrease in quality and affecting price is bullshit. When the demand for new games drops because there are used games, the rules of the market dictate that the companies have to LOWER their prices to compensate. Not raise them. People aren't buying them already! Why would they buy them at a higher cost? And, in turn, if the market forces you to lower your price, then you have to spend less making games. This doesn't necessarily dictate a decrease in quality. Look at World of Goo, Penny Arcade Adventures, Enigmo, Field Runners, Castle Crashers or Braid. Those games are dirt cheap to make, and are fun and original. This means that there might not be a Gears of War 3 or a Call of Duty 5, but you could make 10 Portals for the price of 1 Gears of War. I've been playing more games than ever before, and they haven't been AAA titles. They've been $20 games that I buy off XBox Live Arcade or the iPhone App Store, or from indie developers. I also bought The Force Unleashed, a highly anticipated AAA title, and it's been sitting on my shelf collecting dust. From my perspective it's never been better to be a gamer. There are so many choices for distribution and the barrier to entry has never been lower so there are a lot of inexpensive, entertaining games out. That's the biggest danger to the mainstream game market. And next time I think about putting up $60 for a supposed AAA title, I'll hold out a week and get it used.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Ah, nope! Must be those bastard marketriods again.
Ok. Seeing as you're bitching about how much it's hurting you, here is the solution:
1. Make games that people DO NOT WANT TO SELL after a few months. Ie, make something that you can play on, and on, and on. David Braben knows something about this - he should be spending more time teaching his developers and designers what makes a good game rather than being in management and moaning about everything.
2. When sales start to fall below acceptable levels slash the price of your game. Re-release it as a budget/classic/cheapo title, that'll encourage more people to buy from you rather than a 2nd hand copy. Better to have 1/3 of the original sale price than none at all.
3. Sell downloads rather than physical media, where possible.
Ok, that's my management consultancy over. Anonymous Coward out.
the idiot barbarian here and say what the rest of you are too intellectually inane to say "Bull-fucking-shit! Put some vagisil on it and quit your god-damn crying!"
Am I supposed to be angry at the evil GameStop for ruining the gaming market or am I supposed to be angry at the Game developers for their lack of understanding how free market works?
"gamers start buying used copies which generates money that goes into GameStop's pocket"
This sounds more like a tirade against GameStop than anything else, mostly because they're an upscale video game pawn shop.
For most people, games are sold used on normal channels such as eBay and Craigslist. That puts money back into the gamer's pocket so that they can buy more games.
Really great games continue to sell for up to 2 years after release and are commonly re-released at half-price or with an expansion bundle, and they don't get traded or sold at game stop. Of course if you are in the business of producing and selling generic shit you aren't going to continue to attract buyers once GS 2 comes out in 6 months, so yeah, your shelf life is limited - but who's fault is that. You think your customers should have some sort of brand loyalty to the DRM laden shit you sold them when the next new shiny comes along?
How about if the Publishers themselves began buying back used copies of their games and resold them for a lower price, perhaps with some extra goodies thrown in to draw customers away from places like GameStop.
To me this basically sounds like more greedy bitching and whining from an industry that still produces mostly crap (with a few notable exceptions here and there).
The Long Now Foundation
Charge a monthly subscription fee and force all content to be hosted on servers with client connection programs that cover non-specifics -- problem solved. When was the last time you heard of Blizzard complaining about how many ppl pirate World of Warcraft?
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Cry me a river..
Slightly off-topic, but hey.
In the comments I see a lot of people complaining about video game prices. The story is now even tagged "quitraisingprices".
I have been playing video games since the days of the NES and SNES... and video game prices have barely changed. A new game usually costs sixty euros over here in the Netherlands. That's pretty much the same as the prices for new games about fifteen years ago (130 guilders back then).
In fact, many top notch Nintendo games, such as Mario Galaxy and Smash Bros. Brawl, are actually cheaper (50 euros) than previous entries in the series.
Personally I would EXPECT prices to go up, considering inflation. But prices have more or less stayed the same. I really don't understand what people are complaining about here.
Is this a difference between America and Europe?
(On-topic: I agree that there is nothing wrong with second-hand sales and game developers and publishers should quit their moaning.)
the movie industry saying the same thing about rental shops when they first came out. They ended up dropping the price of videotapes (Yes, I'm old. Deal.) from $50 to $19.95. They don't seem to complain about that any more. Maybe if the game companies dropped the prices to begin with, more people would buy them when they first come out.
If you want me to buy "Megagame 2" but don't want me to sell my copy of "Megagame 1" in case it creates competition for your Megagame 2 sales, then offer me a voucher for my copy of Megagame 1 (you only need to match or slightly better the price places like Gamestop would pay me). Said voucher to to be used when purchasing Megagame 2 )or another of your product line).
Then when you have my copy of Megagame 1, you can destroy it so it never threatens your future sales again.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
first, I've been playing PC games for over 2 decades.
Quality has dropped drastically. Technology increased which gave the illusion of high quality. Games today are a horrendous value compared to just ten years ago. Content has dropped from an observed average of 25 hours of gameplay to around 6 hours. Half the budget is blown by publishers on marketing. Publishers have also gotten quite complacent about their position in the industry. When you have more than 3 sequels, it's easy to forget about innovation.
Since games are so short these days, people go through them faster. Thus they go to the retailers what sell used games.
They're using their grammar skills there.
Now publishers and developers just see revenue the initial few weeks regardless of the game's quality and then gamers start buying used copies
Maybe that's because the replay value of your titles has dropped? All those cutscenes, interactive-movie "games" where there's exactly one plot to follow on exactly one road, you know? Few people see a movie twice, even a good one. So in becoming more like a movie, that's one of the consequences for your games.
Meanwhile, I still dig up games like Crusader Kings occasionally.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
for the last 10 years, you have been rehashing and selling old game concepts, hell, even old games themselves. Final Supremacy XVII. Blowing Tittage MCLMXXIV .....
you've made a mass production industry out of gaming. some generated graphics, some makeshift storyline, whoops, $60 bucks a pop.
take a lesson from wii's success. they went back to basics ; FUN. instead of shoving rehashed, mass produced CRAP like the other game/console providers do, they went to primal basics, and met the need for fun in people.
look back into 1992-1995 period. those were the days each and every new game was a fresh breath, and you people were creative individuals rather than bosses of a shitty industry's companies then.
Read radical news here
David, sames is true for 2nd hand Alien Items mate.
David Braben tried to trick Ian Bell out of his Elite-related royalties.
Ain't life ironic?
What do these buffoons think people do when they sell their old games to GameStop? My guess, which is just as good as theirs, is that they turn around and BUY MORE GAMES.
Imagine that, you make something with no replay value and I up and sell it after I've finished...Shocking.
Oh, really? Great games don't sell beyond the first weeks? Leaving aside that the only recent Frontier Development title I know about is Lost Winds, a download-only game that obviously can't be resold, many games are selling for a long time. Nintendo manages to make games that keep selling a lot for months or even years (a quick check on Amazon shows Mario Kart DS at the top of the DS charts, a game that came out some time last year IIRC). Perhaps the games Braben observed just weren't that great and didn't really deserve long sales?
Besides, used game sales aren't a new thing, many of my SNES and Game Boy games came from fleamarkets.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
1 GBP doesn't equal $2, it's not even as valuable as $1.5 at the minute.
Maybe if the industry wouldn't put out crap (Like the latest Mortal Kombat) and which contains no Rootkits (Spore), People would actually buy the game instead of renting/downloading it.
I've been playing WoW since Nov 2003, what keeps me paying Blizzard? Quality and extra crap they sneak in.
I have a large collection of games that I'm never selling. I love them and periodically replay them, just like favorite movies. Baldur's gate 2 would be one. Ya it's an old game but I still like it. I replay it maybe once a year or every other year. I probably will for a long time too. You could compare it to the Princess Bride. Ya I saw that movie when I was 10. Guess what? I own the DVD. I like it. I don't watch it every day or anything but I watch it now and again. I'm not selling either game or DVD because I want to have them to replay.
Funny thing is truly good games DO seem to sell well for a long time. An example would be Oblivion. It took forever for that game to go under it's $50 opening price, and it is STILL on some shelves as a standard box title at $20-30, not in the budget isle. Reason is it is an excellent game and sales remained strong enough enough to justify the higher price. They drop the price when sales start dropping below a certain point.
The problem is for companies that make games that have no depth, no replay value. They may be entertaining, but only for a very short while. So someone will play them and go "Huh ok, done with that," and then get rid of it. Well sorry guys, but that's life. Don't like it? Spend time making sure your game has lasting appeal.
Same deal with movies. There are plenty of movies that I've watched rental or from a friend that I've said "Ya ok that's entertaining," but had no interest at all in owning. Once was enough. I'm sure those movie companies would really like more money but too bad, I'm not interested in it. You want me to pay the higher price to own it? It's got to be good enough I want to rewatch it.
If it is taking that much money from the devs, why don't the devs buy it back from me at a higher price than the shops and then resale it a price lower than the shops?
I wouldn't by 2nd games from anywhere else if devs started doing this.
Lower the price of the games to a point where demand intersects used pricing. Game spot goes out of business or diversifies to other markets and marginal long term revenues are retained.
Duh! :)
Could take it a step further and package pre-paid envelopes (ala Netflix) in their game boxes to give the buyers incentive to sell it back to the publisher rather than to a third-party store.
I guess the fact that they haven't done this yet means that, like many posts are saying, he's totally full of B.S.
And people still wonder why Atari went basically out of business the first time (or was there a second time?) I can't really remember. It is all blurred into one giant bad decision after another :)
I hate GameStop as much as the next guy, a bunch of money grubbing whores they are... but I think saying used games are the reason they make shitty games is a total cop out... Anyone who looks at sales figures can see good games sell a ton of units and make an insane amount of money and that excuse is as shitty as their games.
Plus, used games are good in other ways, imo. Sure, it may not generate a "sale" and feed money into the makers' pockets, but there is DLC, especially on the Xbox. I've bought a ton of DLC for my used games since I saved so much on the game itself. It also turns those people into players of their game and may make them more likely to buy one of their games in the future.
I generally don't buy used games, especially on the PC (my primary platform) but I do sell my used games. I'm not much into replaying games and I think it's a waste of material and money to have a game sitting around I'm never going to play again.
Also, who didn't buy used games five years ago that buys them exclusively now? Most gamers make more money over time (getting better/jobs) and can afford more games. I bought more used games 5-8 years ago from GameStop, EB Games, Play N' Trade and Gameforce than I do today.
You may have read recently that Spore was the most pirated game in 2008. It had some of the "worst" copy-protection and DRM with hyper-aggressive disc-protection, "call-home" checks, and mandatory limited activations. If anything, this gives support to my mentality that if a game is too hard to install and I can't do what I want with it, I'm not going to buy it.
I'm not going to pay for something that's essentially "broken". I paid for it, it's mine. Fuck the EULA.
Also, if there isn't a demo, I am less likely to buy it. There are too many bad games, and games that "look good" but have terrible game play to gamble with my money on something that may be crap. I'll download the demo, if it's available, otherwise a pirated full copy. If it's good, I'll buy it (Mass Effect is an example of this in action.)
I haven't downloaded that many games, but I either bought them or stopped playing them. I know most people don't buy stuff they download and that reflects badly on us that do.
Make good games, make lasting games, release samples of the game, release a demo and a working game.. There will be less problems with pirating and used sales. You'll have made a good game, a lot of money, and many happy gamers.
When was the last time Atari released a good game, anyway? Too bad Epic is thinking the same thing as they are.
I assume you are joking here.
While it is true that people are buying more and more used cars (actually; the numbers on that don't quite work do they?) or are keeping there cars longer (this is more likely) I don't think this has anything to do with how much better used car salesmen are at there jobs than new car salesmen.
I drive a German car, I would buy American but not for any other reason than the quality of the product.
If the US auto industry wants my next car purchase they should produce compelling, well made and fuel efficient cars.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
If playing games ever taught you anything, it should be that cars are something you steal.
I'm fairly certain that I'm not the only person who reflects this demographic:
Virtually all of my games were purchases second hand. This is mostly true of console games, where about half were bought used; and it is almost entirely true of PC game, where only two titles were bought new. There are a few reasons for that. Cost is certainly one of those reasons, but the importance of games in my life (or lack thereof) is the biggest reason.
Simply put, those of us who don't think of gaming as the end-all and be-all in life would never have purchases the required hardware and the associated games unless we knew that there was a source of inexpensive games. We would not buy the consoles because they wouldn't be worth they money for a handful of games. We probably wouldn't buy the games on the PC either, because we wouldn't be in the mindset where gaming is something that we would want to do with our entertainment dollars. (Besides which, you usually need to invest money in upgrading hardware if you want to play the latest games.)
Now as a publisher, it's probably easy to ignore people in my demographic because I'm not a big spender. On the other hand, people like myself are spenders. We may only buy a couple of new games per year, but we still contribute to the bottom line.
the game industry is feeling the same pain the major labels started to feel in the 90s. awwww......let me get them a kleenex. damn, when my album came out, thousands of copies were given away, copies that came out of MY POCKET, not the labels. and now that i am "out of print", i buy all the cheap used copies i can. 95% of them have been "promos", identified buy the cutout or punched UPC code. so what is the gaming industry to do? lie down and die? MAKE GREAT GAMES and you'll sell a new one. but you can't stop Gamestop from selling used ones. and the record labels were never able to stop used CD sales either. even though a great deal of them were promos, sent out to journalists and radio people, who would then take HUGE STACKS of them to used stores, unlistened to most times, and simply trade them for CDs they really wanted. that's how it goes.....bleh. when is the government gonna bail ME out? shit, my student loans are eating me alive. i guess that's my penance for having a liberal arts degree.
Just keep in mind, regardless of all the doom and gloom reports, the Games industry is still posting new record profits year on year, so it's obviously not that big a problem.
What they really mean is they want to make even more profit and rather than produce games that are of better quality and/or appeal to wider audiences they want to keep shifting the same old crap but make more from it.
Make no mistake, the whole Spore DRM debacle had nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with preventing second hand sales. The games industry has set it's sights on the second hand market as a way to increase profits without increasing effort, I do not think it will win, but accept consumers to have to listen to whines from the industry and take it from behind on DRM and stuff for a little while yet.
Most of the posters here don't seem to realize that it costs $10-30 million dollars to make a AAA console game these days. It requires teams of hundreds of people working for 2 to 3 years.
Games these days contain *hours* of quality recorded voice, *thousands* of high-quality meshes, *thousands* of high-quality textures, and *tens of thousands* of painstakingly hand-crafted or mocapped-then-hand-retouched animations. They implement somewhat realistic physics, quality 5.1 surround sound, and they often support multiplayer modes.
ALL THAT SHIT TAKES A LOT OF TIME AND MONEY TO MAKE.
Yet you're still paying the same $60 price you were paying 15 years ago, when making a good game cost a small fraction of what they cost now.
Forgive me for calling you a lot of ungrateful bastards, but when you turn around and sell your old game back to GameStop for $15 and then buy your next game from them used just to save yourself $8, *the people who made the game you are buying get absolutely nothing*.
If you want us to be able to make good games for you to play, maybe you should consider, *just* consider, y'know, sending that money towards the actual creators of the games, rather than propping up the used-game retailers who are helping to suck the lifeblood out of the game industry.
... I don't believe they have any clue what they are talking about in terms of game quality. Games like gears of war and Gears of war 2 sold 2 million +, the used game industry certainly doesn't seem to be hurting AAA games very much. The truth is industry, still after decades, still sucks at making games.
I rented Castlevania Judgement for the Wii and I was appalled that damn near nothing was learned from the previous 10 years of fighting games of what works and what doesn't. It's like many teams in the game industry have never experienced the last 15 years of games. It's pretty shocking IMHO.
So buy GameStop, or make your own competitor, or invent a way for people to exchange used games with you or with each other. A 20% "Loyalty discount" for exchanging an old game for a new title would work, and then you get to resell the old one yourself.
Of course from your perspective, why would you want to get into the resale market - you don't need people to return the games to you to resell, you can make a billion copies if you want. So resell if you want, or just destroy it so no one else can buy it used.
Loyalty discounts, it's the only thing that makes sense. Stimulate new purchases by giving gamers back the money they would normally get by reselling the game. They are going to resell it - do you want it to be to GameStop or to you?
Oh, and send me part of your revenue stream. this is a killer idea.
and no more. When someone buys a product, and it isn't good enough to keep, or doesn't fulfill their needs for very long, they sell it. This continues until the product ends up in the hands of someone who does actually want to keep the product. Thus the number of copies of the product in circulation is close to the actual value of the product to the market. The better the product, the fewer copies will be resold, and thus the more copies will be purchased from the original vendor. The worse the product, the more each copy will get passed around, reducing the original sales.
This is good for the market, because it encourages higher-quality products, and provides some defense against marketing. It's also good for the economy, because it reduces the cost of impulse purchases. Someone has to purchase a product, test it, and report on its quality to the community. People are more likely to purchase a product if they know they can resell it if it doesn't suit their tastes.
Companies want to force people to buy before they have any experience with a product so they can offload poor quality products on the market, increasing profits by reducing costs. They don't want you to know the product isn't worth it until you have made an irrevocable expenditure. They want to sell more product than the market will really support. However, this isn't good for most companies, especially newer ones. If potential customers don't have the freedom to "try before they buy", then they're less likely to make risky purchases. They'll stick with the names they know and trust, and won't be as adventurous.
Some people argue that if you want to support a company, you should buy directly from them, and not buy used. However, if you want to give a company an accurate estimate of what their product is worth to the market, you should buy used when possible, so they don't overestimate their product.
Companies need to be working their sales estimates based on a fully informed market, not an ignorant one. They can't depend on deceiving their customers forever. People will borrow, rent, buy used, or pirate media in order to be informed about their potential purchases. There's no way to shut down the flow of information. Even if they defeat rental or resale, they can't stop people talking about a product.
So instead of trying to depend on (and investing so much money in) marketing, the law, and technological burdens such as DRM, media companies should invest in making better products in order to be successful.
The real problem is not used stores, it is that there were a lot of good games released that I didn't have the time or money for when they were new that I'm now picking up for cheap because they have more value than current games.
Or not so cheap, I did pay $25 for a unopened box of UFO/X-com about 10 years after it came out. If they still were selling it, they could have got some cash.
On the other hand, with Fallout I bought a jewelcase rerelease of it, which hopefully netted them some money, but saved me 40 bucks.
For me(to bring in a car analogy), it's as if car makers suddenly started making worse cars and wondered why the value of used cars skyrocketed.
Some say this has already happened:)
Instead of giving lots of money to Gamestop by selling your games for crap prices, try a game trading site like goozex.com. For the price of shipping (plus $1 each trade), I have traded about 10 titles this year. All goozex does is setup lists of wants and haves for people, and matches up people for trades.
When you purchase something, you are compensating the people who produced it. Once you do that, the product of their effort is yours; it was traded at a mutually agreeable price in exchange for a symbolic representation of your own effort (money). If you then trade the property you have already paid for with someone else, they pay you in exchange for your property according to what you both believe is fair. The developer/producer was already compensated for that copy by the initial purchase and had nothing to do with the second trade.
They may have a case if the issue is the ability to retain a copy of the game and still sell it. Then you'd have two copies of the game when the producer was only compensated for one. But it sounds to me like they're just opposed to used game sales because they don't get a kickback on them.
If revenue is the issue, make all games register an account online with a key. Then when the game is resold the key is not valid, charge $5 for a new key.
Just think if you bought Civ IV and decided you no longer wanted it. You wanted C&C. You can sell Civ IV for X to gamestop. Gamestop will sell Civ IV to a new person for Y. The new person will also have to pay Sid Mier his $5 to play Civ IV.
Now of course you can do something smarter . . . Lower the price of the game so that the used market makes no sense.
There's a market out there of people who want to buy games, but are willing to wait a while to do so in order to pay a lower price. This demand is being satisfied by those who pay "full price", then find they can sell their copy later, allegedly denying the manufacturer a second sale.
Lesson: as time passes, lower the price.
No way, no how, am I going to pay more than $10 for a game. Call me cheap, but I've got mouths to feed and bills to pay. Heck, I don't want to pay more than $5 unless it's real good. ...but I _DO_ buy games. I may be way behind the times, but I spend the money - the question is who wants it. If the manufacturer wants my money, they'll drop the price to something I'll actually pay for. If they don't, then someone else will be willing to sell me their used copy ... though I'd rather pay a couple bucks more for a new one.
Quit complaining, guys. The market is there - sell to it, don't stifle it.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Adjusted for inflation, even at US$60, games are much cheaper than they were 10 or especially 20 years ago.
easy
stop making games
Maybe cut the cost a bit you jackasses. Maybe it's not worth $60 for that "new game smell", but maybe it IS worth it at $40 or $30.
Microsoft Press Release
1/1/11
Goes a little something like this
As of February 2011 all games that are released on the XBOX will come with a 16 digit alpha numeric key. This key will have a one time use to activate the game for an XBOX account through online verification. Once the game is tied to an XBOX account no other user will be able to play the game without first recovering the XBOX account tied to that key.
This is , of course, the only fair thing to do to protect our game companies from jumping ship (and ultimately screwing us in the end) so get used to it. Oh and this is all ok because we started bitching about this years ago and you pirates/resellers/used game buying assholes/our valued customers would not succumb to our wishes.
I can just see it coming. It seems unreasonable now but just wait. The bitching and moaning will intensify. A few big name companies will "go bankrupt" and then BOOM. You have your tipping point and everyone is so distraught that they accept their new overlords willingly.
Publishers that comment negatively on used game sales is a giant slap in the face of video game specialty shops that help push every title that a firm produces. In addition to all the excellent points already mentioned, those used games help keep the smaller guys in business as they're not backed by grocery or clothing sales like Target or Wal*Mart are. Plus, is Target or a video game shop the ones telling you how you have to buy Persona 4 if you like RPGs, or Track Mania DS if you liked stock cars as a kid?
A used, like new condition copy of FF7 can cost upwards of $100. A second release copy in playable condition can cost upwards of $30.
This is because the game was *good*, and a lot of people thought so. Good enough that it is still, more than 10 years later, enjoying some demand.
The major issue is that games like that don't come often. If more games had high replay value, people would hold onto them until they were basically destroyed, and their used cost would be high, so that newcomers would find original copies as worthwhile to spend money on.
For a newer game, consider Mass Effect. it is uncommonly good, and when I realized that purchasing it used would run me $40 and a new copy was $50, I grabbed the new copy, because $10 didn't matter so much.
I'm a casual gamer, which is (i believe) a far larger group than the serious gamers--I bought two games this month, one used, one new. The one that was used I bought because it was $40 new, and only $10 used. That's because it was a short game with a high turnover rate. I expect to sell it back at $5 when I'm done with it. Mass Effect though--that I'll hang on to. Just in case I feel like playing again later.
Why not support Linux with your games? Linux users don't pirate software usually. Linux users respect software laws. I myself have bought countless PC games in the hopes that they would someday work on my computer. Now some do with Wine, Crossover Games and Cedega, but not most of them. I keep them all because I still want to support the gaming industry. It would be nice if the gaming industry supported Linux. Write in OpenGL instead of Direct3D. Or if you are forced into Direct3D by Microsoft, and have no option, then at least test your software with Wine like other companies are starting to do. I know we're not a large market, but we may be just the hump you need, plus, I can't imagine a better future.
If a person waits 2 weeks they can get a used copy of a CONSOLE game from Gamestop, etc half price. This directly impacts sales from the original company. The same game is then sold 2 weeks later.
PC Games may be pirated but the used games sale market is pretty weak if non-existant. PC Games can sell more initial copies than consoles due to lack of used games eating up the price.
I go to gamestop: Get a nice XBOX for 40 bucks, buy 10 games for 60 bucks, and have a full out used Xbox system. I can modify the XBOX to be a nice Media center with Software mods. I can then have a cheap gamestation and media center for under 100 bucks. NONE of the original manufacturers made money off of me then.
Bottom Line. MAKE MORE PC GAMES without DRM so people will not be forced to pirate the games.
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
if new games were $20 I would buy 3-4 a month. at 50-60? I buy zero. the difference should be very clear.
Then give me a game I don't want to sell. It is that simple. 2nd hand market can only exist if there is demand AND supply. Would I sell my copy of Civilisation II? Alpha Centauri? Supreme Commander? Imperialism? Settlers? Nope. No way. Even ignoring that I'd maybe get 5 bucks out of it, I wouldn't sell them. I want to keep them. I want to play them every now or then. Their replay value is great!
If you want to combat the 2nd hand market, make games that people want to keep. It is actually that simple. Of course, if you continue to crank out games that are good for maybe 20 hours of gameplay and have zero replay value, people will rush through them and toss them on the market again as long as they can still get a few bucks out of them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
So basically you want Ford to bring their Aussie and Euro designs over to the US.
...and buy GameStop. Think of it as the missing step #3.
Games start out at ~$60. Used games start at $50 - $55. After 2 months or so, the price of the used game drops to ~$35 due to the quantity available. At that point, the NEW game should drop to $40, instead of remaining at $60. Most people I know, myself included, will spend the additional $5-10 to get a NEW copy of the game.
If game manufacturers were to stay on top of the rate at which used prices drop, people would be more apt to buy new for longer.
Fuck right off dirtbags.
Drop your prices or get out. Why the fuck should I spend so much money on a game when I can get it used for 1/3 of the price?
The solution is not preventing used games sales.
Either make the game compelling for replays, or come up with games that appeal to a wider audience.
The Wii makes some steps in this direction.
Full disclosure: I haven't played a "shooting game" since Doom. I enjoy games like "Sam and Max", but I don't see the replay value. I also enjoy Backgammon, Sudoku puzzles, and Crosswords. I get quite enough "immersive experience" with real life, thank you. So my total gaming expenditure in that last 5 years has been zero. (So why the hell am I commenting? Because I wouldn't mind seeing someone developing games that appeal to me).
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
If game companies give up copyright protection on their titles, I'd be happy to let them take away the 'right of first sale' protection provided me under copyright law.
Dear Publishers,
Keep your money grubbing hands off of my right to resale and open your own goddamn reseller chain. You're a business. Compete, you spineless pussies.
Signed,
A Faithful Customer
P.S.
Maybe if this generation of games wasn't a load of horse shit we wouldn't be having these problems. I've never been what you could call a 'fanboy', but I've really got to say that I pine for the Halcyon days of the Playstation 2 when good games were affordable, abundant, and here's the important one: still being made for the system. All this whining about used game sales and publishers admitting their intentions to anti-compete with resellers smacks of executive whining, greed, and unimaginative greasy haired halfwits in three piece suits that think they're entitled to the customer's money without actually providing anything worth it. Most of all, it smacks of laziness and bad business.
Here's a tip to the latest crop of unindustrious anti-geniuses to helm the video game industry: If video games aren't making you money, get out of the business and invest in something else! It's clear that you don't have any personal devotion to the medium or your products, so is there any reason you should be frittering away your money on them?
(Oh, wait, you're executives! You don't think for yourselves do you? Your investor-class mentors told you when you got out of the degree mill that 'electronic entertainment' was 'booming', and was the quickest way you could land yourself a McMansion. You bought it, and that's the only reason you do what you do now.)
Do I have any rights to sell games I buy as an online DRM service? They represent only about 10% of my games but I wonder what to do with them when I am done it would be nice to at least "regift" them to someone on my friend's list.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
A used game was once a purchased game. Meaning someone out there paid full retail for it then decided after playing it decided personally it had less value to them than they could get at gamestop. Others who may not have been interested in paying retail then sweep in and purchase afterwards.
Markets work :)
I don't know about the rest of you, but when I get a game that's really good, I don't sell it back, ever.
This explanation has it ass-backwards I think. I would say it's less that games are decreasing in quality because used copies are lining the shelves of stores, and more that used copies are lining the shelves of stores because games are decreasing in quality. The one game I bought this year that I thought was just absolutely excellent--Fallout 3--I intend to keep because it's worth having.
Although, I can see it being a vicious feedback loop.
So because used console games are popular PC games have to suffer as well? I haven't seen anyone sell used PC games. Granted all the console kiddies are a great resource.
but I only buy used when I'm looking for a game that came out 3 years ago and isn't on the shelf anymore. If there was a way I could get a new copy of an old game I'd do it. As long as it's reasonably priced.
With the new expansion of World of Warcraft out, Starcraft 2 getting polished, and Diablo 3 on the board, I don't seem to think Blizzard is complaining.
Oh that's right. They don't make crappy games. So people look forward to buying the games new.
The game industry is lucky in a lot of ways. Not only do they have a limitless pool of fools to serve as labor people are still willing to pay $50-$70 for a game. On top of that rather than just being a "for kids" activity lots of adults now enjoy and play them. This has hugely protected them from the shrinking youth demographic that is in many countries and from economic stagnation. This current de-cession will probably push more people to used games but if/when there is a real recovery if they want to keep going the way they were they need only do one thing. Make games people want to replay a lot instead of get rid of as soon as they are solved.Its really that simple Do that and they will thrive and dry up the used game chain as well.
Most stores have a no-return policy on software because of the problems of piracy, but unfortunately we have to play the role of beta tester /guinea pig only to throw down $60 on a new game that we can't return if we find out it sucks. This is why we sell our used games, and this is why we buy used games.
To the game industry: If the used game market were such a concern then buy back the used games you sell and resell them yourself eliminating the middleman. Show us a little bit of confidence, and eat your own dog food. You created the after market, now you should deal with the consequences.
They have figured it out. But it's easier to implement DRM than to develop a good game that delivers great replay value or play length.
wtf?!?! WHY is this even a DISCUSSION? they don't like it... WHO THE F CARES?!
it's NOT going to go away. they CAN'T stop it. if they step on the toes of the fair use rights of users, this is an industry where there is a rather well known avenue of "civil disobedience" for unsatisfied consumers.
do they want to DRIVE people to the torrents?
STFU! STFU about all the things you can't control. STFU about prices and second hand sales and yes, even piracy. STOP WHINING.
either find a way to make money on the playing field as it exists or GET THE F OUT OF THE GAME! look behind you, there are thousands just waiting to take your place. you are not special. you are not irreplaceable.
STFU, make good games, or get the f out!
jin
I completly agree with the right of resale when you buy a game. That said i do think something needs to be done about the way the retailers handle the used market. Over the last 2 weeks ive bought Fable2, Gears2, Prince of Persia and l4d and on each occasion after reaching the counter the guys in gamestation have recommend i buy it used. There basically encouraging their customers to pay them instead of the pub/devs/etc, now its debatable if file sharing is a lost sale but what gamestation are doing is definatly a stolen sale.
Well, Bart, your uncle Arthur used to have a saying: "Shoot 'em all and let God sort 'em out."
Most games I buy become complete throwaways after I beat them.
Rarely am I keeping games around such a Chrono Trigger, Turtles in Time, God of War, Final Fantasy X, etc.
And only one of those games doesn't have a surplus of supply making a used copy of the game worth next to nothing compared to a retail version. Final Fantasy X is a great game, a classic, but a used copy will run you only $5-$10 because they are so abundant.
You don't see used copies of Chrono Trigger anywhere for less than retail value because game is timeless and valuable due to limited quantity.
Then why not have the publishers offer to "buy" back used copies of a game to either destroy them or repackage the used titles for resale at a lower price point after 3-6 months?
8==8 Bones 8==8
"Five years ago, a great game would have sold for a longer period of time than for a bad game â" which was essentially our incentive to make great games. But no longer. Now publishers and developers just see revenue the initial few weeks regardless of the game's quality and then gamers start buying used copies which generates money that goes into GameStop's pocket, nobody else's."
I only play console games, so I can't speak for the PC, but there are lots of games which continued to sell well for a long time. On the Xbox Halo 2, Halo 3, CoD4, GoW all continued to sell at a pretty good pace well after launch because they had a lot of replay value. Addictive online multiplayer does that. I never pay full price for something that's single player only because the number of hours/$ is so much lower.
I may be an anomaly, but I've never seen the fun in going back and playing a game on a higher difficulty. On the other hand, I really enjoy playing people online. Game developers either need to lower their costs, or make games that have more compelling online play. Who wants to spend $60 for a game that I can finish in just 10 hours? What if it sucks? That's $6/hr. It's cheaper to just go to a movie. Can you imagine paying $60 to go see a movie and finding out once you're there that it's a dud?
Make love, not reality television.
If games cost $30,000 to buy, and people played them for eight years before reselling them, I don't think the industry would have as much reason to complain. As it is, I do not find your snarky and ill-informed analogy the least bit compelling.
Awwww, did your candidate lose? Maybe you should cry some more about it. I'm sure your guy would have waved a magic wand and made our economy perfect. This country is just too racist against your imaginary friends.
Meanwhile, we'll have to cope with the fact that we elected the best candidate for the job. Some call him the lesser of two evils (or the "least of several evils" if you include third parties). But isn't that just another way of saying that he's the best one given the options?
Hell yes!
I don't understand how they can say they can't do any better here when they produce vastly superior products in other markets.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
You raise great points, but I have I disagree on a point:
Wouldn't the rise of the used-game market indicate that people aren't willing to pay $50-$60 for games?
$60 was unheard of? I seem to recall buying $50-70 SNES games (Doom was $50, Chronotrigger was $70).
Lets adjust for inflation... $60 adjusted for inflation from 1992 to today is about $87.50 (lets do it in reverse - a $60 game today is equivalent to a $41 game in 1992). This same argument came up when the new generation of consoles came out... the NES, adjusted for inflation, costs as much as a PS3! Even the SNES was (adjusted) $300 at launch.
Even factoring the cost of the cartridge out, console game makers still have to pay a per-unit licensing fee to Sony/Nintendo/MSFT. Finally, lets not forget that wholesale price of the game is about 60% of retail, so a $10 increase in retail price is only $6 back to the publisher.
I've been programming games for about 13 years now (9 of those years professionally)... so lets take a look at just some of the things that have changed that affect game development costs:
1. Inflation! Cost of games hasn't gone up much but cost of living has.
2. 3D was practically unheard of. Depending on the game, sprites could take a lot of work, but generally there were only a handful artists on hand, and there was a lot of art re-use (tiles, anyone? And how about those 5-frame sprite animations!). Today people expect lots of individual looking 3D characters and backdrops, which require character modellers, background modellers, texture artists, animators...
3. Graphics resolution - HD is at least 1280x720, whereas games made in 1992 for console were 320x240, and PC games were upwards of 640x480. Higher resolution screen requires higher detail models/backdrops and textures. Additionally, in 3D, you aren't just rendering a few parallax 2D planes scrolling by and some sprites, but full on depth.
4. Software complexity - There is a lot more going on these days; much more complex AI, more entities on screen at once (particularly in 3D where you aren't displaying a small contained slice of the world, but a view frustrum).
5. Game complexity - players want ever increasingly complex experiences. Just look at what the top sellers are - the GTA series is a prime example. How many of those players would be satisfied with an updated game that played like the original GTA games now?
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
I often hear this argument, but it's based on the fallacy that poor resale potential is the sole property worth rewarding publishers and developers for. You have to understand -- this is one of the reasons why you have umpteen-hundred iterations of Sports: Roster Update 2008 on the shelves. Those games have poor resale value, due to the frequent updates. This is what you consider to be the market "working correctly." I don't.
Consider a game like "Portal," which was adored both by the critics and the public, and -- from what I understand -- sold quite well. It was a short single-player game, with relatively limited replay value. Had it been released as a shrinkwrap console title down at the Gamestop, it would have been back on shelves, with its (already bargain) price marked down by $5, a mere two days after release. In your "working correctly" market, "Portal" is not a worthy game, because it can be finished quickly. You are making the argument that Valve deserves to suffer financially for making a short game (even at a low price point), and trying to "grab more market share" via Steam will only backfire.
For some reason, I just don't find myself buying this argument.
I am a small games developer (not publisher, big difference), we make games, get good reviews, see lots of bit torrents, and sell some, with the money returned we make the next game, we do get paid, but not rich.
The model is starting to have problems, the cost of developing has gone up (higher production requirements), but despite better review scores, our returns are falling. Soon only the mainstream 'safe' games will be made, dumbed down for the biggest audience.
Gamestop et al, don't contribute to the creation of games, they take a big cut to sell the box, but in terms of the product you buy, they add little value.
I suggest the answer is to cut out gamestop et al, and distribute electronically. We save the cost of goods, distribution, and the retail margin, as the people who make the game we would get a much better return selling a game online for $20 than in gamestop at $60.
I think this transition to online delivery was always going to happen, it's just accelerating.
I have a different conclusion:
I am owed for every person that figured out my game sucks! ( and I want my internet dollars ).
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
There are plenty of new games available right now with no DRM.
The problem is, a lot of /. posters 'protest' the high-priced crapwared games by pirating them, rather than by supporting people following the model they'd supposedly like to see. The more that cheap, DRM-free games are SUCCESSFUL, the more companies will follow that path.
I've gotcher 'Women In Gaming' RIGHT HERE!
You launch a franchise.
You will develop a brand new game every 2 years, with at least one sequel in between.
If with on-line support you will launch at least per trimester a patch with corrections and new content...
And you keep milking the franchise for lots of years! ;)
co-operative buy out of gamestop and other 2nd hand game outlets. Profit share based on resale frequency and be done with it.
open source sub sim. I might start coding again for this. http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/contribute/
I can't remember the last game I paid $50 for. I never paid $60 that's for sure, and I don't buy used games. So someone has to get head out of ass.
I dunno what Braben is moaning about. His current game, Lost Winds, is Wii-ware only and as such not a part of this retail cycle at all. As for claiming that the quality of games ain't what they used to be, this is the man who released Frontier:First Encounters, which was so bugged some shops refused to sell it. Arguably not his fault, as the publisher forced his hand - but it shows his rose tinted glasses.
They do, the Pontiac GTO and Saturn Atsra are both Foreign cars brought to the US. The issue is because they're sold by GM, they sell at a hefty discount to Japanese brands or the similar car in Europe/Australia. They completely hosed their small car branding in the US with utter crap in the 70s/80s/90s, so now the best thing would be to just shut down those businesses, but because of CAFE laws (rather than a gas tax) they can't do that and sell their trucks/SUVs which made a profit in the US.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
The game is ten frikkin years old. It's graphics are 2D sprites displayed at a whopping 640x480. And to this very day, you can go to any Wal-Mart or Best Buy and find copies stocked on the shelves.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
People aren't buying new games because the market is flooded with crap. This is just simple supply and demand economics; the supply is too high for the demand.
No, I will not work for your startup