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100 Million Used Games Traded Each Year In the US
We occasionally discuss the complaints from video game publishers and developers about how used game sales are hurting them, and how they've been testing out countermeasures disguised as features to compensate. Now, industry analyst Michael Patcher has released a report which attempts to quantify that damage. Patcher estimates that used game sales and trades number around 100 million each year in the US. However, despite the immense number of transactions, he doesn't think the used game market is as detrimental to sales of new games as the publishers think. "The vast majority of used games are not traded in until the original new game purchaser has finished playing, typically well beyond the window for a full retail priced new game sale. Thus, while there may be some limited substitution of used game purchases when GameStop employees 'push' used merchandise upon consumers lined up to buy new games, the vast majority of used game purchases occur more than two months after a new game is released. ... To the extent that there is a substitution effect, we estimate that fewer than 5% of new game sales are impacted."
This is insane beyond belief.
Should MSI get a cut of the sales if I sell my laptop?
Why should game companies get a cut of resell?
Even candy is labelled "no individual re-sell".
I would suppose that book publishers would love to prevent the reuse of their products too. The number of books passed on to others is most likely much much higher.
Make shitty games. That way, they have no resale value whatsoever. Or better, call them something-forever and don't even sell them in the first place.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Random AAA game publisher CEO:
"Butt we are teh speciul!!!1"
Imagine libraries would lend games for free. The resulting spectacle and hysteria would be awesome.
Fuck 'em.
I actually collect games rather than sell them, but I reserve the right to do with my physical copies and registered accounts what common morality affords me, broken EULAs or no.
I frankly don't care how little or how much they "lose" through after market trading. Get off my lawn.
as price drops demand picks up; and purchasers at $20 will not buy at the $50 retail price. Thank you for restating how supply and demand curves work.
The real question is:
Is there a price point between the price of used games and new games that would generate greater profits for game manufacturers than the current pricing model?If there is, then used sales do cut into new ones in the sense that purchaser will wait until the game price drops to a price they are willing to pay if the used game reaches that price prior to publishers lowering the price of new ones. If the used market captures those sales then it is cutting into new game sales since used games are replacing new game sales.
Publishers would probably like to price so as to capture as much of the "I must have it on release day" sales as at high a price as possible; then drop prices enough so the incremental demand from the price drop generates higher profits than fewer sales at higher prices. While falling prices would drive down the value of used games and their attractiveness to stores; publishers run the risk of training buyers to wait a few weeks for the first price drop and losing release day sales and profits. Given how rapidly used games start to appear after release shows their is a large demand at lower prices (duh); how to tap into that without hurting earlier sales is a difficult question to answer. It's a tough call; especially given the money it takes to develop a game.
In the end, however, I think their is more to the story than just $20 used game sales don't hurt the $60 new game sales./P.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
They might as well say that competitors games hit their sale so they should have a cut from competitors sales. I can't see any justification for this whatsoever.
If a game has little replay value or is really bad, it is traded quickly. So, if the game companies get a share of used sales, games with no replay value and really bad games would generate the biggest revenue per individual game sale.
That would certainly be a good incitation to make great games.
When you justify buying a new game at $60, knowing that you can resell it and maybe get half your money back makes it a little bit easier. Without that ability, the value of the game goes way down. Imagine if you were buying a new car, and knew there was no way to resell it ... Would that impact the price you were willing to pay?
How are the sales of used games "hurting them", when this is the market model that has always been around, and nothing has changed????????
The only people saying that the sale of used games is "hurting them", are people who do not understand the law, or greedy people. Or both. But there is no middle ground.
There are a few games a year I look forward to, whether console or PC, that I will buy on release date, and purchase for $50-$60. Many other purchases are games that may be recommended later by friends, or games that looked interesting, but not interesting enough to pay the asking price for, so I'll wait until the price comes down.
http://games.slashdot.org/story/09/02/20/0750203/Do-Video-Games-Cost-Too-Much/
We've discussed this before, and the consensus is easy to spot: many games are not worth the asking price. You'll sell more games if at 1-3 months after launch, you simply drop the price point to an appropriate range, depending on the total units you sold at launch and the total expected units. It's been proven- some games sell well years and years after release for a discounted price.
Of course, this has two impacts- if you enjoy selling games back to places like gamestop, their resell value will be diminished, as the retail price will be lowered quickly. Also, unless you have a strong opening for your game, you simply won't sell them at full retail if you have created the expectation of lowered prices shortly in the future.
I'm willing to pay $20 for new games giving the developers and publishers the profit, rather than pay $15-18 for a used copy.
There will be a law and a whole industry dedicated to educating us as to how selling used games is piracy and only done by criminals, and that as patriotic americans you will recycle your games you dont want anymore, failure to comply will result in being arrested for infringing.
I wish I was joking.
Console manufacturers and game publishers are going to move towards games which are entirely downloaded.
Directly downloaded games are impossible to re-sell. So will block this "problem"
Moreover, the revenue from downloaded games is not shared by resellers and retailers. Retailers can take up to 50% of the sale price. Just to sell a box.
When publishers, originate the game, develop it, promote it and take all the risks- you can see why they resent the used game market and the burden of "boxed-goods" retailers.
C.
1) The person who bought the game new gets some money back when he sells it used, thus giving him more money to go buy another new game.
2) People are more likely to buy a new game if they know they can sell it used when they get tired of it. If they know they will be stuck with it, they will be less likely to buy. In the aggregate, lower new prices would be necessary if there were no resales. (This might end up happening if all the draconian DRM makes the "purchase" into a true rental because the game can't be transferred and might fail to "activate" in the future. Such games would be worth less.)
Penny - plain text accounting
Jumpin' Jebus.
What next ? Are Fender going to start complaining that the local pawn shop is costing them millions of dollars due to the second hand guitar market.
What a bunch of assholes.
How many people buy a new game knowing that they can sell it on the used market when they've finished? So the cost to them for the game is effectively lower. How many would not buy the new game, or buy fewer, if that market wasn't there?
I have a huge stack of games, mostly unplayed and never even installed, on my shelf. I don't think I paid more than half price for any of them and most cost the same as two or three beers. When I see something vaguely interesting at that price I grab it. I figure it could cost more second hand in a year or two - if you can find it at all.
Some are original versions, some are those repackaged (xplosiv, soldout) ones from the bargain bins.
When I win the lottery I'll play them all, end to end.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So if this is supposed to be so wrong (from the eyes of the original seller), why aren't car manufacturers trying to clamp down on used car sales?
LOL, today's the day, California! Today's the day your state has to issue IOUs because you all couldn't bother electing people with any common sense. You couldn't elect people who even knew how to add and subtract, LOL! What a bunch of freaking morons you all are. You got the big-ass nanny welfare state you wanted, and now you can't afford it! LOL, just LOL! Hey fellow Americans, take note. If you want a glimpse into Obama's future, all you need to do is look at California.
And look at all those immoral libraries.
What are they doing to book publishers?
Its reality. Companies are "damaged" about as much by the fact that they don't make money off sales of used games as I am "damaged" by the fact that people aren't paying me royalties for every time they take a shit and thus inadvertently destroy the resale market for MY shit.
I have a business plan, after all, that depends on the world paying me for my shit.
In short, when you have the delusional belief that you are owed money for something that nobody else in the world has ever been owed money for nor has anyone ever THOUGHT of being owed money for because its fucking insane, you're going to find your delusions "damaged."
Barcalounger doesn't get a cut of used chair sales. Del Monte doesn't get a cut of used fruit sales.
You want a cut? Do what Amazon did - they make money off new books, and then facilitate sales of used books and take a cut. (and of used games too.)
Game makes want a cut of sales of used games? Fine. Create a marketplace for sales of used games - make it more compelling to use than existing ones, and take a cut. If not, fuck off.
This space available.
You don't have to imagine. Plenty of people lease cars, knowing they can't re-sell them - technically, they don't really even 'own' the car, all for a reduced price. Other people like me would never lease a car, though. We prefer to own the thing outright.
Disclaimer: I'm a game developer working on MMOs, so used games aren't exactly a threat to our business at the moment, since you're buying an on-line account which you really can't sell - the client software is sort of incidental. However, even when I was working on single-player games, I still felt the same way. Which is:
To hell with publishers who feel they don't have to earn their customers' money just like every other business on the planet. The game development industry is big and booming, but it's also incredibly cut-throat and highly competitive, often with very slim margins and high risk. Tough nuts - we finally made it (as an industry) to the big time, and now they're complaining that their margins aren't as big as they'd like it to be.
Guess what - if there's a thriving used game market which sells used copies of your game for just a few bucks less than the retail price, maybe it's an indicator that your prices are a bit on the steep side, especially many months after its initial release. How about you drop your prices to remain competitive? Or release additional content to encourage new sales, perhaps?
I can't stand it when people whine about the reality of the marketplace like that. It reminds me of another entertainment industry that's become universally loathed because of their refusal to adapt to new marketplace realities, and instead use the force of law to bully and intimidate their customers. I hope to God my industry doesn't go in that direction. At least we seem to be seeing a backing off of those insane and intrusive DRM schemes (which most developers I know don't like either).
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Shall we start a massive database to track down all goods worldwide so that the producers can get a share whenever it changes hands?
I bet that would be fun.
I accidentally left my newspaper in the bus this morning. Somebody else might have picked it up. Are they going to arrest me now?
Honestly, does it really fucking matter?
It doesn't matter if 100 used games are traded each year or 100 million. GAME COMPANIES GOT THEIR CUT WHEN THEY FUCKING SOLD IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
I don't give a shit if it takes 5% or 95% of their 'potential revenue' away - JUST BECAUSE YOU WANT IT DOESN'T MEAN YOU'RE ENTITLED TO IT.
In the puntastic words of someone funnier than me, it's not rocket surgery. Geez.
Used games do not hurt or harm the game industry. Why? Because the consumer has a first-sale right to sell the game and the game industry has no right to financially gain from that secondary (or tertiary, etc) sale.
So when some third party profits, and you have no rights to the profits, it necessary follows that you were not harmed.
Under the game industry's logic, because my fellow employees are being paid by my employer, I'm somehow losing out on that money, because for some bizarre reason, that money should be going to me.
Or under the same asinine logic, McDonald's deserves a cut from the local Burger King's profits because it's making money that, for some bizarre reason, McDonald's thinks it deserves, even thought it has absolutely no right whatsoever to those profits.
Of course someone is going to complain about my analogies. That the game industry produced the game so therefore it has a right over the game. In my first example I didn't do my coworkers' duties, so therefore I have no right to their pay. And McDonalds didn't serve the customers who went to Burger King so therefore they have no right to those profits.
But you're missing the point. It is completely irrelevant that a particular gaming company originally produced the game. The main issue is that once it sells a copy, It no longer has any resale rights to that copy. I'll say it again, it has no right to any resale money in the same way that I have no right to my coworkers pay or that McDonalds has no right to Burger King's profits. None. Nada. Zip.
The gaming industry certainly wants profits it is not entitled to. But that is not harm. That's jealously and blind greed.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Especially school books. Consider how many students sell their kickass expensive books every year after passing the course!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
buying a car second hand steals money to car manufacturers
let's forbid that shamefull behaviour and save economy
really, some companies do not deserve our money...
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
Even if used games sales are ass fucking them raw, users have a legitimate legal right of first sale. They can go pound sand.
I'm just hoping they lose a class action lawsuit over their SecuROM crap & install limit bullshit.
You can resell a car as long as it works too can't you?
You can resell your TV's, DVD players, Lawnmower, Children(put em up for adoption), dogs, cats, food, toiletpaper, heck, you can even sell your poo to be procesed as furtelizer.
Its a basic right to resell your shit when your trough with it.
Its bullshit and a pandora's box if they regulated resale of anything.
Their problem is the same as with all other Big companies out there. Since the dawn of the digital age, 2nd hand sales have both massivly grown(because its way easyer to reach a massive audience to resell to) and its become much more concentrated and publicly viewable how much it turns over.
They just want a piece of a pie they never had and should never have any right of cutting in to.
They make their money with the initial original sale and that should be it.
Book publishers have a great racket where if they want to make more money on books and prevent people (esp. college students) from reusing books, they put out a new edition.
Just fix a few typos, and voila! It's like you have a new book to sell.
And if you dare try to walk into a college class with the old edition you are SURE to fail...
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." - Pablo Picasso
Steam for CounterStrike and Half-Life could have it all worked out. It's convenient because you can play on any computer without a CD, while you can't sell the game because it is tied to your Steam account. I think the CD key can be tied to only one Steam account.
Here's what a games publisher sees when he reads that article: "yada yada yada yada yada yada 100 million copies yada yada yada yada yada yada yada yada."
No sig today...
I have some insight on this.
I ran a Computer store from '92 to '95. I started doing a "buy, sell or trade" thing on computer games in 94, I immediately noticed a big jump in new game sales, and the reason was told to me by hundreds of customers, being able to sell or trade the game in when they were done was a gigantic incentive to buy the games in the first place.
I also tried renting them out, BTW; that helped sales a little, but only because every 3rd or 4th customer ended up buying the game through late fees.
Up until Microsoft's attempt to kill or seriously injure the PC gaming industry came out, the "games for windows" program, I would have said that PC game reselling was a 100% good thing for the gaming industry; I imagine it would be impossible with the state of EULA's to do it legally, these days.
Blatant Plug: www.gotthefire.net/dnn. Go. Be Round.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.
It's that games are $50, which makes it a problem. I think in the minds of the American consumer, $20 isn't "too much money", but $50 is something that makes you think a little bit. Earlier this year, that would have been at least 25 shares of Ford stock.
This is my sig.
Who is prepared to shell out $60 for a single game without any possibility of resale?
To be frank, that $60 price mark has prevented me from buying any new games. I have entertainment dollars to spend, but like anyone else, I like to be careful about how I spend them. When it comes to games, I consider anything over $40 to be something that requires some pondering where the end result is that I usually don't buy.
And now they want to discourage or even prevent the possibility of resale? Then they had better start changing some other policies. Either allow refunds or exchanges for things that are not identical or lower the price to $30 or less. Increasing risk is being placed on the consumer whose only recourse is to complain... and stop buying.
Killing the second sale market could do some serious damage to the first sale market. Usually, I presume that they have thought these things through, but now I am having my doubts. Game publishers are getting as bad as music and movie publishers.
I held my private rebellion to this.
You were right until the book publishers also caved to the "Don'Wanna'Read" crowd at the same time. I improved my grade by some 3 points because the older edition I picked out of a department ex-libris bin had more thorough explanations everywhere. Then on mean days I'd ask "brilliant" questions based on material that wasn't in the new edition.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Old editions have the same information. In fact based classes where there's only one right answer and no possibility of a viewpoint, other textbooks on the same subject have the same information. I never bought a new textbook after first year, and you don't ever have to.
paying them a cut, actually.
Advanced users are users too!
OhMyGawd, by accident you might have stumbled onto TehWin.
Random madeup example: "Tom Clancy's NSA-Force: Lebanon" or something. Then as a bonus you can include special documented tech specs from Tom's secret notes, not found anywhere else. A complimentary special-edit version of a novel would also rock.
GAME-story: 10 hours.
Special Edit Clancy Novel: 10 hours!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Exactly. How dare colored people in the mid-1800s say that slavery is "hurting" them. After all, up to that point that's how it had always been.
While I don't agree with the game publisher's stance on the issue, I think I've illustrated the flaw with Jane's line of reasoning.
Up until Microsoft's attempt to kill or seriously injure the PC gaming industry came out, the "games for windows" program, I would have said that PC game reselling was a 100% good thing for the gaming industry; I imagine it would be impossible with the state of EULA's to do it legally, these days.
You have a 100% protected legal right to resell the game. However, if there are technical measures in place to prevent you from transferring your activation, then you are best avoiding reselling that game entirely. Console manufacturers want to knock out resale too. I suspect we're going to have to get some laws passed if we want games resale to continue into the next decade.
(It's been four minutes since I last posted a comment. WTF? This is the thanks for helping make slashdot great? We'll take off the ads that you don't see anyway, but we'll waste your time every time you comment at the speed of thought instead of pretending to be a fucktard who can only read and write about 75 cps?)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Seriously, if I pay $50 for a game that takes me five hours to complete, I'm not just going to play through it again to unlock some shitty artwork. I want REAL meat and potatoes for my money, and more so if I'm going to keep playing it. I'm looking at you, The Simpsons Game. Sure, it's a couple years old, but I paid $50 for it when it first came out. The controls made the game nearly unplayable, but hell, the script was funny, so I persisted. I beat the game, and now it's been sitting on a shelf ever since. The point is that unlocking the stupid "cliches" and other assorted crap wasn't enough to make me ever want to play that game again. And this is an increasing attitude with game developers. To charge full price for a game that takes me only a couple of hours to beat, and then add "replay" value by telling me to spend a few more minutes collecting stupid crap so I can see lame sketches of the characters they made. Along with the attitude that it's okay to ship games out with insane bugs (lol Sims 3) as long as you plan on patching it later, game developers are taking their market for granted.
No portion of this post may be rebroadcast without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball.
Here's what really pisses me off: Half the games I buy used I don't buy used by choice. I buy them used because the publisher has flat out abandoned them. If I want to buy an old PC game that isn't starcraft then I'm not going to find it on store shelves or at gogamer.com. They are DONE with that game and can't be bothered to sell it to me even when I want to buy it. So I have to go hunting for a scratched up CD with perhaps no manual.
So now they're bitching and moaning that some guy (or gamestop) is "stealing" their sales of new media (in actuality he is simply selling it at a pricepoint they are unwilling too) but they leave money on the table by refusing to keep their old titles available for sale. And now they want to cripple non-new games or flat out remove the ability for me to even buy them? Well, to that I say: Fuck you, sir.
Yes, I'm aware of GOG but their list of titles his hardly exhaustive and I have a gutteral feeling there isn't a lot of overlap between publishers making their stuff available DRM free on GOG and the publishers that are complaining about Joe Xbox gamer being able to resell Halo clone of the week after beating it in 10 hours.
They really have thought it through.
They arent actualy trying to end the resale market entirely. They are creating a justification for some features, etc, not being resellable. So that when you go to buy a new game you really dont know if the entire product will be resellable, and that when you go buy a used game you really dont know if the entire product is in there.
Think "Bonus" Downloadable Content.
"His name was James Damore."
MAKE SINGLE-PLAYER GAMES WITH HIGH REPLAY VALUE.
Make absolutely damn sure the game is worth playing over and over again before you box it and ship it. Include multiple endings, tons of sidequests, a New Game + feature, and/or post-game content. Three of my favorite RPGs of all time - Chrono Trigger, Valkyrie Profile, and Dragon Quest VIII - have at least two of the four things I mentioned that create high replay value in single-player games.
Multi-player games probably survive in the average gamer's house longer than single-player games do, because the whole point of multiplayer games is to play them competitively with your friends repeatedly until you get sick of them or until the new version comes out (the Madden franchise, racing games, Super Smash Bros, etc). With single player games, though, you are playing against the software itself.
If there is no compelling reason for me to play a game again after I beat it the first time, you'd better believe I'm listing it on eBay right after the end credits roll. Give me a reason not to sell the game, developers, and I promise I won't. CT, VP and DQ8 are never leaving my collection.
I had a thought a few weeks back when purchasing a copy of "MLB: The Show '08" on the used market. A friend of mine has the newest verison '09 and the differences, while there, are very minor. I stated that there was no way I would purchase the newest version for full price ($60) when I had the previous version because all that I would be getting is a few features changes and a roster update. That is when the idea hit me of simply allowing users to purchase updates for their sports games (as with most application software). For example, charge them $30 instead of $60 if they own a version from one or two years back for a new copy of the current version. In order the get the $30 off, you would have to "trade in" the old game to prevent several people using the game to get the discount. This model, which is really only applicable to sports games that have yearly releases, would encourage people to get constant updates and would, in my opinion, provide the game makers with additional revenue and make the users more happy because they don't have to pay full price for what seems to be a minor update.
The college my mother teaches at has gotten fed up with that problem in the math department. The book she's going to be using in the near future will cost the students somewhere around $30. I'm not sure if it's going to be viable to resell the books, but at $30 it's far less expensive than what the status quo was.
One of the other instructors is letting his basic math class bring in whatever math book they want to use for course lessons. I guess he'll be handing out worksheets or something along those lines for homework.
I personally shudder to think how bad prices for games would be if game companies weren't having to compete with a secondary market. But then again at some point people decide that enough is enough and look for cheaper ways of doing it or of opting out completely.
Well, to paraphrase Dr. Horrible, sometimes that status isn't quo.
Those one-time bonus cards are an insult to me as a gamer, and I don't use those codes or buy any of the DLC as I believe a game should be self-contained and not require anything extra to be enjoyed, otherwise IT IS A BROKEN GAME.
I keep all of the games I buy and never sell them back, but this really pisses me off. I'm a collector (maybe not as rabid as some, I only care about the games I like and not about collecting every last rare gem), and I expect my games to work in the future as is.
Systems can break down, networks can be shut down. I don't want to go back and play something where there are big pieces missing for one reason or another. I'm not paying some company to hold parts of my game hostage.
Twinstiq, game news
A cut of late fees?
No... a cut of your tax dollars. Which is why the holy-rollers and "morally superior" freak out when the local library pays for a copy of Madonna's Sex book.
Especially school books.
Mod up! I used to eat for a week off one semester's worth of book-buy-back.
Has anyone else discovered this site? It's great, brings back memories of trading games with my friends growing up. Of course I hold on to the best games. But this is a good way to try out second-tier games that look interesting enough. I don't go through games the way I used to, so for me this is a much better deal than gamefly or other rental.
That reminds me of some .NET programming classes I've taken (work related).
The VB.NET book, Programming in Visual Basic.NET 2005 Edition, has an MSRP > $100. The C#.NET book, (Murach's C#), has an MSRP of $50, and everyone, publisher included, sells it for $37.
Both books have 2008 editions now.
The scary part? The Murach book is easily the better of the two books.
Extra fact: The VB.NET book is actually only half the material the authors wanted to cover. The second book (also costing > $100) is Advanced Programming Using Visual Basic 2005.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
To all the publishers, why should I buy a digital copy of a ten-year-old game for $20 when I can get a used copy for $5? I would also like to remind you that the used copy is a physical one that cannot be remotely shredded (see Steam).
I buy ~99% of my games used because I refuse to pay retail for them and I refuse to fund the development of CD-checking/anti-copying malware.
And what's so "unscrupulous" about splitting up a multi-pack? That's half of what retailers are there for: so you don't have to order things by the pallet.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Used goods in any market, does not hurt sales of new goods. Period. The ability to resell *anything* adds value. No member of any industry has the right to stiffle the used sales market, unless they have a death wish. Used sales are a win-win for the consumer and the producer. The ability to sell something you bought new for about half the price you paid for it, is like getting a 50% discount, but the original retail outlet gets 100% of the money.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
I don't know why your post was marked down, because it is a valid point that I would like to address.
The difference between your example and mine is that pretty much everybody today would say that slavery is bad, from an ethical point of view. Not iffy, not questionable, but just plain bad.
On the other hand, the law that allows games to be resold (the "first sale" doctrine) is a good and beneficial part of copyright law. Without it, you would never be able to sell that used textbook from your freshman year of college. There would be no such things as a "used book store". Every book you ever bought, no matter how expensive, would have to be a brand-new book from the publisher. That would be heaven from the point of view of the publishing industry, but it is obviously not in the public interest.
Same with games.
So any game that I can beat in under 35 days, I just rent and save myself 48 bucks or so. I think Blockbuster has gotten wise to my scheme though, and is trying to counteract it by having extremely limited numbers of any games I would want to rent, but having tons of them for sale. God forbid they actually rent the games for something proportional to the amount of time you keep it. They are a terribly run business. I expect them to go belly up soon.
... just how??
If the gaming industry wants me to spend money on games, then they're going to have to produce some games that actually have genuine interest to them. Run around and shoot things? Been there, done that, got bored with Quake (I, not II). Go online? Why?
Frankly, I've recently removed OpenArena (another run-around-and-shoot-things game) from the machine and I'm still trundling on with alternating sessions of CIV or UFO-enemy-unknown. I've not met anything with the long-standing interest of those games in 20-odd years (OK, 17-odd for UFO), and until the games industry can produce something competitive to those, I don't see any reason to invest my money in them.
The various Tomb Raiders did make a reasonable attempt at filling that niche - and I still get copies for the works machines for downtime. (We consider it to be less troublesome to supply something ourselves for people's off-shift time, rather than letting them install anything that they want to. It is a *works* machine, after all.) So, 3-for-a-tenner new games works fine for us.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Imagine if you were buying a new car, and knew there was no way to resell it ... Would that impact the price you were willing to pay?
No.... because I'm not a consumer whore and don't feel the need to update my car every few years. My cars stay with me till it dies.
Wouldn't the people leasing cars (and not always cheaper than buying, it depends on the miles you drive) be more like the people using STEAM or even people renting games?
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3