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Publishers Want a Slice of Used Game Market
grigory writes "GameStop's business model depends on a healthy flow of used games: incredibly '[GameStop] enjoys a 48 percent profit margin on used games.' Game publishers do not see a cut of the secondary sale because it falls under the first sale doctrine. Now, some
publishers and manufacturers want a piece of the pie. 'One marketing executive, who did not want to be identified for fear of angering GameStop and other retailers, said the used game sale market is still depriving publishers of money because it gives consumers an all-too-easy alternative to buying a new game.' Interesting picture of companies fighting for your business, and (surprise!) complaining about being left out of the money stream."
and gets it!
Someone should tell them that, since Steam appeared there is no used games market.
Hell, come to think of it, now Steam's here, very soon there won't be such things as publishers!
Sucks to be them! Maybe someone should tell them?
I wonder if these game publishers (and music, movie and book publishers) ever stop to think about what they are saying. If the logic is that they have some ongoing interest in the product they sell us, then doesn't that imply that as a purchaser we have an ongoing interest in the money we give them? So when GPG takes the money I spent and buys new equipment for their offices, shouldn't I be getting a new monitor out of the transaction as well?
Or do they figure that this only goes one way?
If a bookstore can sell used books without giving any money to the publisher, I fail to see why a game store can't sell used games. For that matter, are we going to insist that everytime a geekstore resells pokemon, magic cards, miniature collectibles or other similar items that they need to pay the publisher a fee? Or the same thing for baseball cards. And if the stores need to, why not the individuals? (Maybe I shouldn't be too loud about this but I'm sure the Post Office would love to get money from stamp collectors buying and selling their stamps. Or the Treasure Department and coins...)
If your idea sounds ridiculous when the product is replaced by a functionally identical product, the idea is probably ridiculous.
If they are actually successful in doing anything about this, what next? Car manufacturers complaining because they don't get a "cut" of used car sales, because used car dealers are providing an "easy alternative" to buying new?
Either that, or game publishers will be the next on the bailout list...
Executives at G.M. are wondering why they never thought of this one.....could've saved them from bankruptcy.
Sell us "second run" games for $20 or less as new/unopened products a few months after release, and we'll cut out the middleman (gamestop).
I don't buy $60 games unless I *really* want them -- badly. Otherwise I wait until I can get them for under $20 -- any way possible.
had done this also? Would they have managed to get their way, one is forced to wonder? Would GM be thriving if they had a cut of every used car sale? Who the F--- do these publishers think they are anyway?! If this happens will I have to pay Dell every time my business sells a refurbished Dell PC? Hell, the pawnbrokers alone will never allow such a thing to go through.
These are somewhat rhetorical questions and the slippery slope fallacy applies a bit. Still, the principle is sound as a reason why the publishers shouldn't get a cut of used game sales, in my opinion.
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
This is just like with a car, or some other item, where the original manufacturer gets a kickback every time it is resold because -- hey, wait, they don't get anything from it because that's a stupid idea! The original manufacturer has already sold it and given up any future interest in it for a fair price! Why the hell would the maker of a bad video game get more money every time EB manages to fob it off again on an unsuspecting customer?
it's the original sale, that's their slice.
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
So they want to sell only a LICENSE for a game, which is not transferrable? Screw them! We're not talking about a $10,000USD business software package here, we're talking about a fuckin' GAME. Greedy fucks.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
and then see how many people buy a used game when its a measly few bucks cheaper instead of $10-15 off. New games should follow these pricing guidelines in my opinion to reach a critical mass of sales success:
$10 - bargain bin chumps
$20 - standard rate new game
$30 - AAA rated new game (think like the extra 10 bucks you pay for BluRay discs over DVD)
$40 - AAA rated special edition bundle mumbo jumbo (i won't buy em, but some people like the extras I guess)
If a bookstore can sell used books without giving any money to the publisher, I fail to see why a game store can't sell used games.
That's because you're rational, and understand the first sale doctrine.
Remember - these companies that are all in the selling entertainment business hold up the Holy Grail of money streams as their ideal. The RIAA. Make an item once, and every single time it changes hands, media - whatever - make a buck on it.
It's insane, but there's also a metric ton of cash involved, so of course the more unscrupulous types are going to gravitate towards that. Notice how the source who said the gaming companies "want in" on that revenue stream to which they are not entitled, refused to come forward and name himself/herself.
Any shakedown racket in its infancy would behave the same.
Instead people say "Hey, I want to buy a CHEAP game, and don't care if it is not the newest thing out there."
So if you are a game company wanting to get into the 'cheap, not recently released game' market, it is easy. Simply cut your prices for the stuff you brought out last year by 30% and for two years by 50%.
You are not going to be cutting into your 'new releases' money, and you will be giving the people what they want.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I really don't understand the perceived conflict between retailers and game publishers. Retailers like GameStop pimp new releases just as much as they do used games. And anyway, if no one bought the game new, then GameStop wouldn't have any used games to sell! So if anything, GameStop needs more people to buy new games so they have more used copies to buy and sell at their huge profit margins. Unfortunately, game makers just don't seem to comprehend this relationship - so they're edging closer to a download-only model. Just look at this useless new doorstop PSP that Sony is releasing.
Freedom is drinking a beer in the park when you're supposed to be at work.
If they want a piece of the used game market, they can open their own stores and compete against GameStop just like everyone else.
In the rest of the world, the only time the original Vendor/Distributor/Manufacturer/Whoever gets a cut of a second sale is when they're adding some value, by doing a factory refurbishment, or inspection, so why should the game publishers be any different?
They can "refurbish" the game: Reset any DRM installation restrictions, clear out the multi-player accounts, check the disk for scratches, and replace any missing bits of paper in the box.
Then they can have a cut.
Until then, welcome to second hand sales.
There's no Steam for the Nintendo DS. (as an example)
The Nintendo DSi has the functionally equivalent DSiWare.
While Sony and Nintendo are slowly moving towards more and more DLC and downloaded games, they don't come with manuals or boxes
You're right that they don't come with boxes, but all WiiWare and Virtual Console games that I've tried have an instruction manual under the Home menu.
The "downloadable" option isn't available for older machines - the heart of the used market
Apart from the Nintendo DS and PlayStation 2, older machines don't have any commercial developers to complain about them. There aren't any new SKUs for the GBA, the original Xbox, the GameCube, or any pre-PS2 system, unless you count the few games sold by homebrewers.
Some games are good, just not so good I need them ASAP, and not so good that they're worth ~$70. (CAD, as I'm in Canada, don't know exactly how much less they are in the US, and don't feel like looking it up) If all games were $50 or less new, I'd probably buy a lot more new games. Most games I buy for $30 or less used. %50 off is nice, $70 for 10 hours of gameplay isn't.
It's also worth noting that some games don't get cheap even when used until months after they've been released. Fallout 3 is currently only $5-10 less for a used copy, so I may as well buy it in the shrink wrap.
The only thing I can see game publishers doing to try to sell as many first hand copies as possible is have a grace period of a month or two from the publishing date when you can't sell used copies, but they'd probably have to pay off stores to honour such a deal. Expecting a cut of re-sale of your product is just silly.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
In the context of a game "publisher" usually means "Guys with the cash." Basically the publisher is the company that ponies up the money to have the game made. That is why you'll see even companies like Epic have publishers. It isn't as though Epic needs someone else's name to sell their game. It is that they don't want to incur all the financial risk. So you get a publisher to pay for it, often a much bigger company.
Gears of War was published by Microsoft, for example. So suppose they spent $20 million on making it. Not an unreasonable amount for a game that quality, maybe they even spent more. Now let's suppose it had bombed for whatever reason. Had Epic incurred that cost, it would be real hard. They are a private company that employs about 75 people. Private means they can't just sell stock to raise money. A $20 million loss would equal over a quarter million dollar loss per employee.
Now MS is a massive public company. They've got the cash sitting around that $20 million is peanuts. What's more they can sell stock if they need to raise money. Thus the risk is something they can afford to take.
More over, many dev studios aren't sitting on much cash at all. So they need money during the development time of the game. After all you have to pay the programmers and artists and such while the game is being written, not after it sells. So even if they were willing to assume the risk, they just can't since they just don't have the money it would take.
You do see some companies that self publish. Stardock has done this. Galactic Civilizations II was written by them and published by them. Means they self financed the game. All the risk and all the rewards are theirs alone. They've now gotten in to publishing other games as well.
So publishers probably aren't going away. Many development studios will want someone to pay for their game, and that is what a publisher does. The publisher won't actually distribute the game, they'll just fund it, and then sign agreements with services like Steam and Impulse to get the game to consumers.
Also, as big as Steam is, you are kidding yourself if you think it is more than a fraction of the market. There are plenty of publishers that don't release games on Steam, and even those that do are often not exclusive. EA sells many of their games on Steam now which gives Steam a huge boost in titles since EA is massive, however EA also sells their games in stores. The store copies don't use Steamworks or anything, they are totally independent of Steam.
Ask a manager or employee of a gamestore what their markup is on new games - what they actually make as profit. If they're not complete assholes, they'll tell you - a games store makes only a couple of bucks off of the new stuff, if that - the publisher keeps the remainder. Pay 65$ for a new game, the publisher gets at least $60 of that.
Pay $20 for a used game, the games store gets around 15-19$ of that, depending on the condition of and demand for the game. The markup may seem a bit ridiculous, but independent games stores would be out of business if it wasn't for the used market - the margins on new games are so thin that they'd have to move an enormous volume of product to make up for the difference they see in returns on used games.
I'm all for the used market, even though I buy most of my games new - it keeps the stores in business, even with dozens (hundreds?) of copies of crap and not-as-popular-as-they-thought-they-would-be (Nintendogs, anyone?) games sitting on the shelves.
No, publishers exist to provide advance money and get you into brick&mortars.
Reviews, word-of-mouth, and liberal chargeback policies exist to seperate the wheat from the chaff.
And while we're at it, how about I get a cut of the resale each time a house I've built changes hands?
Maybe when you buy a used car you should send a percentage to the original manufacturer....
Or maybe all that Lego I get for my nephews at yard sales for 25cents/bucket, the guys throwing the yard sale should mail a penny back to the company.
Does this not all seem just a tad crazy?
It's no different than what they're asking.
I say don't drink and drive, you might spill your drink. Before you get behind the wheel just stop and think.
I've been a gamer for over a decade now. The fact of the matter is the market is diluted with crap, and even a lot of the "hits" are a lot less fun/shorter than the games from last decade. I mean, sure, Gears of War is fun for a time, but how does it even compare to Deus Ex or Jedi Knight? I mean, you can even see how video games have progressed in the sequels of some titles. For example, compare Deus Ex 1 & 2, or Thief 2 & 3. Mario Party 2 and Mario Party 8.
Then there's the sheer amount of crap, even from "trusted" and "quality" companies. Like Soulcalibur Legends. My friend is a big fighter game fan and bought that game. Usually Soulcalibur is a "quality" title, but that game was so shitty! It seemed like a demo it was so short and lacking features.
You raised the prices of games by $10 and eroded their value. People aren't paying for new games because the price of a "new game" isn't worth it to them anymore. And it shows. It used to be that a New game would cost $50 and GS would be selling it used for $35. That means there's a lot of people buying the new game and few buying the used game (high supply of used games, low demand.) Now, the games costs $60 new and $55 used. Which means the exact opposite (low supply of used games, high demand.)
If I was a game publisher and I wanted to kill the market for used video games, I'd lower my prices to $30 and probably sell more than twice as many copies, making it up in volume. I mean, if you want the new Gears of War, you'll try and save $5 off of it because it already costs so much. But the difference between $25 and $30? Not many people care. In addition, when I get sick of GoW and return it, I'm getting $30 bucks back. That's like a tank of gas. What would you get back for a $30 game, $15 bucks? That's not enough motivation.
I completely agree with you but their argument is simple: people are buying games new, installing it on their computer, installing any cracks necessary to make it play without the CD, then selling the game second hand (and then the cycle continues).
They can't stop the NOCD cracks. They've tried. They can't run the game from CD, the performance is lousy. So all they can do is whine and lobby.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I hadn't purchased anything from Gamestop until recently. My employer moved offices recently and now we are across the street from a Gamestop. I went over to purchase LIttle Big Planet and they assumed I wanted the used copy. There was only $5 difference between the used and the new and I figured I'd rather get the new. I knew something was up when the guy behind the counter kept telling me I could save a few dollars if I got the used one. Was I really sure I wanted the new one? Are you really sure? I figured they must be doing very will with their used games. Most of the store is full of used games.
What does Gamestop pay for used games? They must have some soft of dynamic system that keeps track of demand and quantity on hand before they quote a price. Is it worthwhile to sell games to Gamestop? They wanted to sell me on a membership card that would give me 15% when I sold a game to them.
The few games that I have bought used were from Gamefly. The nice thing about Gamefly is they at least give you a *new* case (not a beat up and gross one), cover art, and the booklet. I supposed I'm picky though, I don't buy a game unless I know I really want to keep a copy for a long time.
Clearly the reason there's a huge profit margin in used games is that new games are priced way too high.
I was thinking along the same lines. If they don't like the used games market, then either make games that are too much fun to part with (I almost giggled typing that one) or adjust prices according to how old the game is, and price used games off the market. You want brand new game X? Pay 59.99 for it. You want 6 month old game X? Pay 35.99 for it. 12 month old ...you get the idea. Use the Wal-Mart philosophy and undercut as you go, if a used copy is 18.99 and the new game is $20, I'll pay the little more for the brand new, even if the used copy looks spotless. But if the used copy is 35.99 and the brand new copy is 59.99, the game makers themselves would save the 25 bux without hesitation.
So, copying software is theft, "just like stealing an apple, or stealing a car. There is no difference; you're stealing a product". And yet, when it comes to reselling those products, different rules apply? Once I've bought my apple, or car, or furbie, I can sell it to whoever I want for whatever price I want. Why would software be different if you want it to be treated as a tangible object?
If a bookstore can sell used books without giving any money to the publisher, I fail to see why a game store can't sell used games.
First sale laws already distinguish among formats of works. In the United States, for instance, you can't rent phonorecords (copies of sound recordings) or copies of PC games without the copyright owner's consent (17 USC 109).
Sony and Panasonic aren't complaining about used TV sales, Toyota isn't complaining about used car sales, and Dell isn't complaining about people reselling their computers. In what world is someone reselling the game considered taking away money from the publishers? Lets set aside the fact that some people will pay full price for a game because they know that they can resell it later and recoup some of the cost...
Its not like people are going out to buy used games. They want cheap games. If they kept publishing their old games, and dropped the prices as the games got older, I'm sure they could take a huge chunk out of used game sales. Its not like I'm falling all over myself to save $5 off of a new game at GameStop. Seriously, every time I buy a recently released game, they offer me a used copy for $5 less. Oh boy, sign me up!
It looks like that, instead of thinking about the problem and adjusting their business strategy, they've chosen to whine like petulant children about something that every other industry in the world (well, at least those based on real physical objects) doesn't have a problem with. Or maybe my brain just isn't sophisticated enough to understand their business genius. Either way, their little rant makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
Good luck getting that done. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
I see your 17 USC 109(a) and raise you a 17 USC 109(b): Record Rental Amendment.
Not to suggest the obvious, but the publishers seriously want to sell used games then they could take the games that aren't sold after a period of time and sell the at half the price of new games.
It's just software. And with software you have relatively high fixed costs for development and then you have practically no marginal costs for selling the product. Suppose for the first year, you sell X number of games of a title at $69, .3X at $69 the second year, and .1X units at $69 in the third year. Used games are selling .4X units at $30 in the third year. 0.4X times $30 brings more revenue than 0.1X times $69.
So just price the unsold new games of that title at slightly less than the used games of that title are selling for. Since you have no marginal costs on your sales product, you will be profitable. But no, you're a fucking marketing major and math is hard, so you want to pass a law to prohibit any 'advanced' business model that your little brain doesn't understand.
I'm surprised that with so many game companies in New England, no one seems to have adopted the sales model of Filene's basement.
The game companies get their cut at the time of first sale. The selling cost of the game already includes in the price the value to the customer of the ability to resell the product. The assumption the game companies are making is that if they lock this out, they can sell more product at the current prices, but instead what will happen is that they will be have to drop their prices some amount to account for the fact that it is less valuable to the purchasers.
This is a fairly standard element of elementary economics; for instance, see this chapter of Price Theory, where virtually this exact problem is problem number 12 in chapter two of the book.
Which just goes to show that for all the supposed value of an MBA, people in business still routinely fail to apply even the simplest economics to their own worlds.
How about they actually make games that have replay value and don't suck so that nobody will want to trade them in?
"the used sale market is still depriving of money because it gives consumers an all-too-easy alternative to buying a new "
This is the precise concept that motivates the First Sale Doctrine. You only get paid for selling something yourself. Why should you get paid when someone sells something that used to be yours? When you sell your used car, do you have to give a kickback to the person you bought it from? It makes no sense at all given the set of commerce rules that we have come to accept over the centuries.
Really there is no end of the negative consequences that result if you decide that First Sale is not a valid concept. You have to question the entire meaning of the word "sale" if you do this.
Games that you can't resell are worth less. How could anyone think this will lead to more revenue for publishers? People won't be willing to pay as high of prices for new games as they do today if there is no resale value. For example, the market for used cars supports high new car prices. You're less hesitant to spend $30k on a new car if you can sell the car after a few years and recoup some of your investment.
Yeah and then we can get those pesky book publishers to get the authors to write books with replay value so that they don't suck and nobody wants to trade them in. And we can get the people who build houses to build houses that have great replay value so they don't suck and people don't want different ones of those things either. And maybe we can get slashdot users to write posts that don't suck...
Why bother
"Publishers exist to separate the wheat from the chaff. Otherwise, you'd have the situation like on Apple's app store, where you don't know which of the 25,000 apps are worthwhile."
Yes we do, through social networking.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yeah, I guess Gutenberg really screwed those monks over too.
Why bother
In the age of the internet, games are uniquely poised to capitalize on aftermarket sales (and sales due to piracy) in a way that no medium in history has been able to, and it can all be done just by modifying the design of the product. Here's some examples that work extremely well:
-DLC. Look at Burnout Paradise. Two years later, it's still getting meaty, significant upgrades on a regular basis. The game has had ELEVEN content updates, 5 of which were paid / premium add-ons. The publisher gets paid for each of those! Bethesda knows how to nail this too, despite some early mishaps with horse armor. Rockstar's figuring it out too. The right DLC will make you a ton of cash, even from the pirates.
-Recurring subscriptions: Some MMO's give away their clients, and make their money on premium DLC and monthly subscription fees. Apogee understood this years ago, with the original Wolfenstein shareware. Download it and get 1/6 of the game, which was a meaty, satisfying experience on its own. But pay up and you can get the other 5/6ths!
-High replay value: Rock Band & Left 4 Dead's co-operative multiplayer emphasis give them huge replay. I almost never see a reasonably priced copy of Rock Band sitting on the used shelf (trust me, I've looked, I want to import the songs into Rock Band 2). Rock Band follows the DLC model, too! The longer you convince someone to hold onto your game, the lower the aftermarket churn, and the higher you can keep your MSRP before you're undercut by the used market. Just ask the creators of Mass Effect, or Super Mario Galaxy (I dare you, get all 242 stars).
-In-game advertsiing. The people who buy games used are necessarily doing so after the big retail splash of the original launch. These new eyeballs can view ads impressions just as well as the original pair, though, and the value of that digital billboard is only as high as the number of people who can look at it at any given time.
Efforts to thwart the aftermarket's existence entirely, through one-time activation keys and emphasizing downloadable games, are just going to piss the customer off. The days of making a 4-hour singleplayer game with no replay value beyond deathmatch/ctf and expecting to have high sell-through are over; The high-budget $60 Terminator: Salvation game is only 4 hours long, it's going to be littering the shelves of used stores. The only way to stop the used market from undercutting the new market is to make the new experience so compelling, people don't want to part with their new game for a long, long time.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
they could announce they were cutting the price of games by 1/2 unless gamestop revenue shares. If they did that then the price of used games would drop by half too and game stop would lose half its revenue!
The price drop would actually not mean fully half revenue loss for the publishers because they would sell more games.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I don't think PCs are ruled out.
They are (or at least my IP law books says so). IIRC, neither software nor music CDs can be rented. But books and video recordings can. BTW, the relevant distinction in that language is probably between "limited purpose computer" and "general purpose computer."
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Bingo! You've figured out the blatant contradiction that supporters of strong IP are facing. On the one hand, they want it to be just like traditional property, and to act like it's a natural right, and can be stolen, etc. On the other hand, they want to turn around and license up the wazoo.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
There is an easy solution: Sell only used games.
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
All i'm hearing is "whaaa! I want more money" bullshit. I am tired of these companies who want everyone else to play by the rules (copyright) trying to circumvent the first sale doctrine. Guess what assholes, someone already paid the market price you set for the game and you got your compensation. If you think it's unfair, raise the prices and see if you get as many people purchasing your game. It is bad enough game companies sit on games that they have effectively abandoned, abuse people's PCs with malware designed to "stop piracy" and overall treat the customer with general contempt.
Gaming companies have already done a bang up job preventing PC gamers from selling/giving away their game to other interested parties and now they want to double tax paying customers because of their silly said business model. So go ahead and cripple the resale market. You may be able to kill it but there will always be the black market and those first sales you may have gotten will dry up as well.
They are just too fucking greedy to realize it.
I don't sell games, though I have a couple of friends who do. Personally I just use gamefly and occasionnally buy a game that I've played and know is a keeper.
But let me tell you about my friends. When they sell a game, the money either immediately is applied to the purchase of a new game, or is basically put aside until the new game they want comes out. Rarely does that money not get put back into again, hell, it must, their game library is growing, not shrinking, and I hear about the new games they've purchased (from places that doesn't sell used).
So you go ahead and cut off used games and watch how your new game sales drop by an almost identical amount since those people no effectively went from paying $20 every month for the new bad ass game to paying $60, so they just don't buy games anymore. See how well it works out for you, ya greedy ignorant bastards.
Yours Truely,
Customer
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of selling used stuff.
Before the used game stores there were used record and CD stores and used Video tape and DVD stores. Pawn Shops buy and sell all of them and did this sort of thing before the "Used X" Stores.
Even Comic Book stores do that, buy used comics for pennies on the dollar and sell them for "retail" or "collector's price" based on how rare the comic is and in what condition it is in.
What next, Game Publishers want a piece of eBay and other auction sites that sell used games? Give me a break!
Game Publishers already got a sale from whomever bought the game new, but the person got tired or bored of the game or it didn't meet the expectations and they sold it to the Used Game store to get some of their money back. Game Publishers should love the Used Game Stores because it stops people from pirating the game because it costs so much to buy new and the used price is more reasonable.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
The translation:
"Wah wah wah!"
Perhaps if you greedy bastards didn't sell games at the price you do more people would buy them. Instead, for a lot of people, they can't just casually pick up a game and take a chance like you would on, say, a $20 DVD. $70 is a LOT of money to gamble on something that stands a 50/50 chance of being garbage. And no retailer I've ever come across will give you your money back under any circumstances, so you take a big chance buying most new games.
Perhaps if the industry didn't put out so much absolute garbage we'd be more willing to take the chance. Unfortunately they aren't willing to not release unfinished games, crap games, and so much other effluence.
They're reaping what they have sown. And all they seem to do is cry about used games and how they're losing revenue.
Cry me a river.
Simply create content that either: A) Is worth keeping beyond the initial period it takes to complete your game, B) Is an evolving product which gets updates to retain your customers. C) Is geared toward online/interactive use with multiple users, so that the gameplay itself is ever-changing (think RTS) I *still* have my original copies of Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft, with all their sequels as well. Even without the CD-key requirements to play Ladder games on Battle.net, I'd still keep the original discs around.
Most of the comments here don't seem to get the situation. Publishers don't like the fact that GameStop is getting 48% profit margins from selling these used games. Now, here's where most of the Slashdot comments get it wrong: they assume the Publishers are pushing a particular (and unfair) solution to this problem.
In the past, I've defended the idea of stores getting involved in second-hand sales. I still stand by the first-sale principle. So, let's look at some possibilities here.
Option #1: Publishers don't like second-hand sales, so they enact legislation to stop second-hand sales OR they require a cut of every second-hand sale. This would be wrong. The first-sale doctrine prohibits this. And, consumers should be angry if this is what publishers were doing. Most of the Slashdot comments seem to assume that this is what publishers are doing, and they make comparisons to used books and car sales. This is not what publishers are doing.
Option #2: Publishers get involved in the used-game sales. If GameStop is enjoying 48% profit margins, then there's a strong impetus for competition from the publishers themselves. There's nothing wrong with Publishers doing this. They're just jumping in and competing the used-game market, just like everyone else. (In fact, Stardock is attempting to setup a "used game" sales system along with their "impulse" DRM system. You can sell-back your serial-code and someone else can "buy" it. Admittedly, this gets odd. "Used bits" are no different than "new bits". And, what's to stop Stardock from always saying "sorry, we're all out of used copies of our game; you'll have to buy a new one"?)
Option #3: Publishers create additional content so that people hold-on to their games. The article states that this is what publishers are doing - trying to incentivize customers to hold-on to their games, thus lowering the number of people selling them. Again, nothing wrong with this.
I'm sure there are plenty of other options people could come up with.
There is nothing wrong with publishers getting perturbed over used-game sales, and there is nothing wrong with their attempts to get money in the used-game market. The only issue is whether or not they go about it the right way. Option #1 is the wrong way, but there are good ways to go about it. Most of the Slashdot comments seem to assume that publishers are trying Option #1 - and then complaining that publishers are greedy and underhanded. I see nothing wrong - in principle - with publishers trying to make money off used-game sales or being disturbed by GameStop's 48% profit margins.
The height of American corporate practice - we won't do anything to keep our customers but will spend millions creating artificial mechanisms to distort the market and end any competition for them.
The good news is they're succeeding wildly - for instance I've neither pirated nor bought big corporate music in years because I can't stand either option. Instead I just buy direct from bands for half the price in a market *not* distorted by Sony and BMG, and by odd coincidence the artist gets to keep all of it.
It turns out market arbitrage is not a constitutionally protected right.
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Use a game trading site. I've tried a couple, and the best by far IMO, is Goozex.com
You send out games you don't want and accumulate points depending on their MARKET value (not rape-me-in-the-ass trade in value @ gamestop), and use those earned points to request games that you want, (which are also worth market value). The currency isn't $$, it's goozex points.
You pay shipping (usually $2/game) when you SEND games to other people, and it costs $1 when you REQUEST a game you want. Great way to get rid of stuff you haven't played in years, and you save a ton of cash to boot. Plus no middle man bending you over.
Isn't a used item that has shown some wear due to use ?
A used computer game is as good as the day you baught it.
It's only devaluation is that it is not the newest thing.
The problem with games publishes is that there is very little
new under the sun. In fact they are publishing "used" games
in the concept that the games have already 'used" ideas
and people are not prepared to pay top dollar
They do not see enough difference between "used" games and "new" games
G
some publishers and manufacturers want a piece of the pie.
Ooo Ooo! Me too! Can I have some of that money too, please? I have just as much of a property right over that copy as the publisher does, so I'd like to have some of GameStop's money too, please!
Thanks!
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It's much worse than a 50/50 chance.
--Obyron
I see a lot of comments here comparing the "First Sale" profits of video games to cars or TVs or other physical utilitarian devices.
The main difference, in my opinion, is that in the first year of owning a car or TV, only the first owner can get value from it. In the first year of life of a game disc, 12 people can get value from that one disc.
I don't think you'll see Bungie, Epic, or Infinity Ward complaining about this. They've figured it out... you sell people the game and give them a great multiplayer mode (or some other reason) to hang onto it, and they will. Used copies will be few and far between.
The people who are really suffering are those that make truly fantastic single player games. Prince of Persia comes to mind... it was great, I thoroughly enjoyed it. All 20 hours of it... and on my schedule, that's 5 days of having the game to do 100% of everything there is to do. So I rent it. I actually rent all games that have no multiplayer aspect. The only games I purchase are the ones I can see myself playing online still, 6 months down the line. You might say make the games longer, which is an option, but I personally don't WANT to invest more than 20 hours into any single player experience, and to be honest, when it is longer, like 100+ hours for a Final Fantasy game, you spend most of that time not having fun, just trying to level up to do everything.
This applies to DVDs and to a lesser extend music as well. One DVD can easily fully serve a group of 20 people in one week if they pass it around and watch it in groups.
I'll leave you with this... I think more than the disc, game companies, movie companies, etc are selling you the experience. The experience of playing through the game or the experience of watching the movie. And I believe they should be compensated for each experience they provide. I do think that $60 is a bit much for a video game, but I think it's to compensate for rentals and used game sales. Once everything goes digital, we will see a shift. Let's say that for every 1 copy of a new game that is bought, 2 people probably play that disc, on average, could be more or less, not sure. So $60 provides 2 play experiences. The publisher sees approx $30 per experience in this model, but assuming the first copy was $60 and the used copy was $55. That's $115 spent, and Gamestop probably paid the original owner about $25 for it, so they paid $35 for the experience. If the second owner sells it back very quickly for $25, then he would have paid only $30, bringing this in line with the above of $30 per experience. So $65 spent total for two plays, or $32.5 per experience. If the publishers had complete control over this, the players could have each spent less money for the same amount of, or more (because they get to keep the game), game.
However, it may be be a utopian thought to think the publishers would pass these savings onto us completely, I like to dream.
Singer - manufacturer of sewing machines - had a really good trick around the turn of the century or so, I hear. Sell your snazzy new sewing machines for a ridiculous amount of money... then offer an equally ridiculous trade-in credit for old sewing machines. Then, as soon as you get the old sewing machines, destroy them utterly.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
An identical situation - where the original producer gets a cut of every subsequent sale - has been happening across Europe in one particular very high value market for nearly a decade now. It's called droit de suite, and it's granted on art sold at auctions to make sure that impecunious artists get a cut of the multimillion resale values of their art. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resale_right It's a pretty contentious issue, especially for us mercantile Brits.
At least we know Duke Nukem Forever will have sufficient development time behind it. That's a certain buy on release game.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
See oddly I consider the ability to buy any song (just one song), DRM-free, an absolutely amazing shift in how things work.
Valve Software recently announced that during the recent "75 percent off" sale on Steam, Valve made more revenue than when the games were at full price. Lots more people bought the games.
If the publishers want to compete with the used market, it seems to me their best option is to either:
1. Produce such a high quality product with so much content and replay value that everyone will WANT to own it first hand, and that it's so good that it will be months or never that a first sale customer is willing to let it go.
2. Sell at a price that makes it make no sense to wait for used copies to become widely available.
Neither of which the game publishing industry is willing to even seriously consider. Instead they want to use RIAA tactics to force the used market out of existence.
Corporatism != Free Market
Take for example a successful title, Gyakuten-Saiban: Yomigaeru Gyakuten. This is one of the titles known as "Ace Attorney" series in the USA.
There are three versions of this exact same title in Japan, i.e. the original (Sep.2005, sold at 5040 JPY or about 50 bucks), "Best Price" version (June 2006, sold at 3129 JPY or 31 bucks), and "New Best Price" (Apr. 2008, 2100 JPY or about 21 bucks).
130000 copies of the original version were sold, but they sold 200000 copies of the "Best" and "New Best" combined, so apparently they made more money from the budget-priced versions.
This is not an isolated case, it seems many publishers are lowering the price of popular but older games in Japan.
What the matter with these people? On one hand they want to be able to patent "Computer Implemented Inventions" (ie SW) - where the traditional, or at least the popular view is that patents are for significant, real-world inventions like machines or tools; something tangible. So they seem to argue that software, such as cmoputer games, are tangible enough to be patented. But on the other hand they want money for each time it is being sold, copied or even looked at - because now it is suddenly "intellectual property" on par with works of art, like music, paintings and novels.
Either way, I don't see the merit in their arguments - if you sell tangible goods, you pass on the ownership, and if it turns out that the thing you sold for $100 can be sold on for $100000, shame on you for not seeing that opportunity. The same goes for works of art, as far as I can see; isn't that almost the way it goes - a painter sells his work for pennies, and later it goes on Sotheby's in London and sells for £10000000?
It is this kind of behaviour that time and again show us all that those in the self-proclaimed "upper class" are in fact not rich because they have worked hard and been extremely clever and intelligent, but because they are greedy low-life who lack a few basic building blocks in their moral and social instincts. Is it any wonder that socialism seems like a good idea sometimes?
In other news, car manufacturers complain that they're still being deprived of important revenue streams because the used car market offers consumers a convenient alternative for buying a new car.
No, wait. Car companies *don't* complain, they got into the secondhand market themselves, and offered an added value by doing a full checkup and offering limited brand warranty on the used cars, too.
I realise engine checkups aren't really possible on used games, but if they want a piece of the pie they should work for it, not sit on their arses complaining.
As a related item, btw, the renting of video games is being put to a stop in Belgium - no more additions to existing rental collections as of a few days ago, and no more renting at all from the end of the year. Is this a trend that's happening in other countries, too ?
What a depressingly stupid machine.
Bingo. And that they're not doing that is what convinces me they're not really interested in giving customers a good value proposition; they're just bitching that someone is preventing them from screwing customers as hard as they'd like to.
If they sold "classic" (anything that's not the new hotness) games in different packaging for the price of used, who would buy used? They could take the wind out of Gamestop's sales right there.
Lots of companies spend giant piles of money trying to figure out what customers want so that they can try to deliver it. In this case, it's blatantly obvious what customers want -- a slightly cheaper game -- and it's even obvious exactly what price they're willing to pay. Gamestop has done all the market research for them. If they want to make money, it's on the table for them to take. If they don't, they can let Gamestop take it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Can you imagine what would happen if:
There would be blood on the streets. How is this any different? FFS - can someone please stop the madness?
Console games CAN be rented out.
As of June 2009.
So you just turned up a blank card, doofus.
I mentioned 109(b) to show that the law already discriminates among formats and that major video game publishers could lobby the U.S. Congress to have the law amended to discriminate further.
But you can lend it out for free at the library?
Yes. From the statute in question, with my emphasis:
Nothing in the preceding sentence shall apply to the rental, lease, or lending of a phonorecord for nonprofit purposes by a nonprofit library or nonprofit educational institution. [...] Nothing in this subsection shall apply to the lending of a computer program for nonprofit purposes by a nonprofit library, if each copy of a computer program which is lent by such library has affixed to the packaging containing the program a warning of copyright in accordance with requirements that the Register of Copyrights shall prescribe by regulation.
Precisely. And I think this quote is frakked up:
"The used game sale market is still depriving publishers of money because it gives consumers an all-too-easy alternative to buying a new game." Ahhhh. Poor baby. What's next? Chrysler's going to demand a piece of my profit when I sell my Avenger? Honda's going to demand a percentage of my Insight, because my poor neighbor bought used instead of new??? Judas Priest.
Fuck em.
(pulls out gun). Come on Chrysler and Honda and RIAA and Squaresoft and Sony and Toshiba. I DARE you to try to take the money I earned when I sold my used games, computers, cars, VCRs, or any other object your greedy mafia-like hands try to grab. You might get the money, but it will cost you your life Mr. Mid-level manager, because I'm not letting go out it voluntarily. Frakking bastard.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
The used market helps the poor. Many people wouldn't be able to get a house or car or TV or videogame system if the used market did not exist. Any corporation or government who interferes with that market is elitist - for the rich and powerful, not the common man, and said government should be abolished to form a more-perfect one that serves People not corporations.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
One of the biggest reasons I buy used games at Gamestop is the return policy. You can play a used game for 7 days before deciding whether to keep it. Publishers, I think, underrate the importance of this policy. Essentially, it allows me to buy a game I am not sure I will like without any real consequences.
The fact of the matter is, there is sea of crap games out there. Even so called AAA games often suck. If I buy a game new and don't like it, I am stuck with it. If, on the other hand, I buy it used then I have a week to try it out. This makes me much more likely to try a game that just looks like it might be good.
When you start a fire, be to windward of it. Do not attack from the leeward. -- Sun Tzu
I see it as a forced, painful, crowbar'ed lurch. But it is a good thing, regardless.
a lot of people, including those of us who are software engineers, prefer hard physical books. im not going to shell out for a kindle, books are portable easy on the eyes and shelves full of books in your house makes you look SMRT :D
oh and some things i will NEVER, EVER switch to electronic media for no matter how much money I have. My field survival guides, edible plant guides, maps, etc that I take with me into the back country.
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!