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If You Resell Your Used Games, the Terrorists Win
MojoKid writes "Game designer Richard Browne has come out swinging in favor of the rumored antipiracy features in the next-gen PlayStation Orbis and Xbox Durango. 'The real cost of used games is the damage that is being wrought on the creativity and variety of games available to the consumer,' Browne writes. Browne's comments echo those of influential programmer and Raspberry Pi developer David Braben, who wrote last month that '...pre-owned has really killed core games. It's killing single player games in particular, because they will get pre-owned, and it means your day one sales are it, making them super high risk.' Both Browne and Braben conflate hating GameStop (a thoroughly reasonable life choice) with the supposed evils of the used games market. Braben goes so far as to claim that used games are actually responsible for high game prices and that 'prices would have come down long ago if the industry was getting a share of the resells.' Amazingly, no game publishers have stepped forward to publicly pledge themselves to lower game prices in exchange for a cut of used game sales. Publishers are hammering Gamestop (and recruiting developers to do the same) because it's easier than admitting that the current system is fundamentally broken."
I buy ONLY used games for my XBox 360.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
How is a broken retail model related to terrorism? I don't see the connection. And I have RTFA.... still says nothing.
-- (this is a sig) My Computer Programming Forumhttp://www.programers.co.nr/
If you can re-sell games then they may cost more initially.
But people are more likely to buy them because they know they can re-sell them.
See also Apple.
And Apple are doing rather well, aren't they?
The real secret for cutting down on reselling used games (can't eliminate it entirely) is to provide an incentive for the customer to retain it. New content, re-playability, tie in with future products that open new avenues of gameplay, rewards for brand loyalty, etc. You make a nice single player franchise, have there be some sort of in-game reward for owning other products, having played them, or even still having the original disc and manual.
Oh, and don't shit in your own sandbox when you go werewolf on the series - destroying everything and everyone just because you want it to be 'though provoking' when it all comes crashing down (looking at you Bioware / EA...).
You continue to make another Call of Duty / Battlefield clone with a crappy five hours of single player action to make a quick buck - your game will get resold to Gamestop, that's just a fact. Multiplayer 'passes' prevent resell of a multiplayer game, but it won't do donkey dick to prevent those who are tired of owning your product from selling it off. Just accept that this will happen if you make shitty games.
If Mr. Browne has ever purchased a used car, borrowed a book, DVD, or CD, then he is a hypocritical schmuck.
The first sale doctrine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine [wikipedia.org]
They're lower than ever! In the 90's you would spend the same amount of money on a game, $50-$60, that you spend now. Video games are one of the few things that inflation has barely touched, which is probably why the industries crying over not being able to stuff their coffers. Even consoles were selling for close to what they cost now, what with the SNES and Genesis costing around $200, the Playstation around $300, and the Saturn around $400. It's not used games that are killing the market, if anything it's a market that hasn't changed in almost 20 years that's killing it.
If that is true why isn't MW3 cheaper in Steam?
"For every 5 used-game sales, one 8 year old girl is sexually abused! Stop used game sales to stop child abuse!"
'prices would have come down long ago if the industry was getting a share of the resells
Did anyone else?
I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
You can usually buy a game on Steam for less than the cost of the console version's used game if you wait a few months.
Instead of paying Gamestop (which is a very sleazy company), you pay the developers directly.
I like that business model much more than these used game shenanigans big chain stores like to exploit.
A used game usually only even saves you $5. And for what?
So the profit can go to the sleazy retailer instead of the developers who wrote the game? Count me out.
Games have been sold with just an offline serial check and were resellable for quite a few years
Did the industry see a significant increase in income after complicatiog these parts?
The game developers calling for a share of used market profits are advocating the death of First Sale doctrine in the name of perpetuating a doomed business model.
Maybe I should RTFA more often.
The used market has flourished since time immemorial, probably more so in the past than now. It isn't responsible for the lack of creativity in games. Blame the state of the industry, dominated by risk-adverse mega-corporations like EA that take over or muscle out the plucky independent game studios that used to characterize the industry.
What I really loath about the special pleading of the 'content industries' is not so much its frequent-though-not-total dishonesty; but it's sheer lack of perspective.
Is it, quite possibly, the case that used game sales are bad for aspects of the game creation business. However, the right of first sale is a fairly fundamental aspect of people actually being able to 'own' things. Guess what, guys: Even if your direst predictions are true, this is a case of video games vs. meaningful property rights. A sense of scale would be in order.
The same thing goes for assorted other 'IP' issues. Is piracy hurtful to the music and video industries? Quite possibly(though history suggests that their estimates of how much so should be taken with a grain of salt that would stun an ox...); but can that possibly matter more than such minor quibbles as 'due process' and 'innocence until proven guilty', which are trampled on by most of today's more enthusiastic anti-piracy schemes? Even if it were true that the whole damn industry would burn without such legislation, what of it?
That is what really gets to me. Yes, it is also true that these industries have a history of mendacity about the real damage inflicted by various things that they don't like; but that is a petty footnote: When it comes right down to it, the thing that they don't like(used game sales) is derived directly from a right more important than the entire video game industry. GameStop can rot in hell, they are a thoroughly parasitic and inefficient middleman; but meaningful ownership of property is far more important than video games, even if the direst predictions of their self-interested proponents are taken at face value.
He produced the Frontier games, didn't he? My experience of those was:
Frontier: copy protection so bad that you had about a 25% chance of being able to start the game until you removed it.
First Encouters: required a patch to run at all, then crashed. I think I played about an hour before I gave up.
So I doubt he has to worry about anyone wanting to buy a used copy of either.
There are people out there willing to pay millions of dollars in aggregate for single player games that don't even exist yet, and pre-owned games are killing the market for single player?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
And create games that are so good that no one bothers to trade them in. Also, we have a right to resell our property. Deal with it.
That's called Steam, isn't it? I don't remember the last time I paid more than $5 for a game there.
The used market softens the ridiculous price of games when they come out. If Joe buys a game for $60, and resells it for $10, , he can use those $10 to buy another game. If reselling used games becomes impossible, then Joe might be short $10 the next time he tries to buy a new game, and will not be able to afford it. He could just wait until it's on sale.
The one place where the game industry loses is because of the friction of the used market: The cut that the intermediaries take. If they want to make that friction go away, why not allow reselling of games, right within their platforms? Why not lower prices to spur sales at full price. I sure have not bought a game for $60 in many years.
And then there's also the model followed by this guy called Gabe Newell. The best ROI his company ever got did not come from extremely expensive games that people can't resell. It came from making a game free to play, and instead of making people pay to get advantages in game, he just got his Australian sidekick to sell digital hats. Since people loved the game, they also bought the hats for Gabe's free game.
But it's easier to blame piracy, or used games, or the Wicked Witch of the West than it is to build a very solid product first and figure out how to get paid later.
Looks to me like Core Games is doing OK.
Seriously though, what is a "core game"? Is it short for "hardcore"? Then what's that? Is it a hard game? Is it a complex game? Is it a flashy blockbuster game?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Are you selling us an object that we own, or are you asking us to pay you for convenient access to a system that you own?
You can't have it both ways.
before gamestop the pawn stores resold games some times at high prices as well.
The games industry is MUCH more fragile than the car, music or movies industry, before some smartass comes in with his "used cars never killed the industry", perhaps you should also look again at the MASSIVE bailout of a car company that happened in the not too distant past.
Used cars didn't kill GM, poor management did.
How many people do you think would put up $20-30,000 to buy a car if there was no used market?
The thing is that these games retail for a huge price, usually $60 now for PC. That's too much. But the price does not go down very fast except in brick-and-mortar stores where there is incentive to push old product off the shelves. Online prices do not go down as fast and publishers can maintain their inflated idea of a game's worth. Print, stamp, wrap, ship and stock a boxed PC game and there's a lot of overhead, so then why are online games selling for exactly the same price as a store bought game? If you've got cost reduction you need to pass along some of that to the customers. (a coworker made this point earlier how some people naively assume that higher margins means higher revenue, whereas you can make much more money by reducing margins if that increases sales)
I have no problem with this, as long as they make it clear what they're doing. If you don't like the idea, don't buy them. If nobody buys such game, they won't be sold any more.
Dude is right. Video games are a competitive marketplace. If more people bought the games new (because less people bought used), there'd be more games published, there'd be more pressure to lower game prices, etc. Games aren't made as charity or on a government quota, they're made with the hope of financial returns.
All the "I am a Slashdot nerd, and my armchair financial analysis is more valid than people who are trained and well-studied and have full financial data" posts are such nonsense. It's a little self-serving that the best financial plan (according to Slashdot) happen to be "allow unlimited torrents and cheap used games and and Kickstarter re-makes of 80s games and 20 hours of gameplay for $20!!!"
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
This means that it's about time for another video game industry crash.
customers were treated about as bad now as they were before the last one. it took the crash at least for a short while to treat their customer base well. i think they need to relearn that lesson.
I guess me and Amazon are killling the games industry together by paying 15GBP for a game after 6 months to a year instead of 40GBP right away. PS to game developers (looking hard at Bethesda) don't release very buggy software if you want repeat customers.
Complete Bullshit. We still pay full price for good, new games.
The availability of old games I had to pass up because I couldn't afford them on my allowance at the time doesn't change that.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Look at all those used cars that get sold. Taking money away from our American Automobile industry. That is just as bad, and should be outlawed. No one should be allowed to buy used cars, they should have to support the industry that created the cars by buying new cars. I'm sure that is just as likely to bring down car costs and improve quality as banning or preventing used game sales will clean up the game industry.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
If enough people did that, no one would have console games.
Uh... Since when can you sell your games second-hand on Steam?
I mean, Steam is the main thing proving the guy right, here.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Then you're not getting current releases. Steam is not that cheap unless you're getting indie games or old releases. Skyrim is still $59.99, exactly the same price it had when released on day one, and exactly the same price as it is in the stores (ok, the local store has $59.96 :-). New on Amazon it is $49.99. Fallout New Vegas is still $40. The original Fallout is selling for $9.99 and that's what you could get it for 5 years ago! Checking a sample of RPG games I saw none under $9.99 until I got to the third page (not counting "free to play"). I don't expect any of these are cheaper than what I can get by going to Frys and searching the bargain bin.
Sure. Why not? Honestly, I have absolutely zero faith in the average gamer. Despite DRM, locked down consoles, and attacks on their property rights, they keep buying this shit right up. Some of them even support such decisions saying, "It's all the fault of the evil pirates, and not at all the fault of the people who fucking implemented the DRM in the first place! We can't have any evil hackers, so harm everyone by locking the console down! If you buy used, you're not supporting the game developers! You're as bad as a pirate!"
What's especially sad is that it's very, very simple not to buy a game. Absolutely pathetic. Are these people brain dead?
Buying used games has been rather commonplace, especially prior to digital downloads being the big thing and you often went to rent or buy used games at a rental shop or local gaming joint. Yet somehow the whole 'used game' thing is suddenly an ugly threat to the pockets of big publishers. What happened?
If it's about the whole DLC and microtransaction craze of the industry these days, then I don't get it. Aren't DLCs attached to accounts and not to specific item purchases? What benefit would a used game buyer have in buying a game with DLC the original owner purchased, they don't get it as well, do they?
I think it's evident - as others have witnessed - that there's a bubble that's about to pop and a market that's about to crash when companies who originally handled this rather well in the past are now gnashing teeth.
Let's face it, this is nothing more than a lame argument to secure the idea of a new, much more oppressive distribution and consumption model, and has nothing to do w/ losing money, and everything to do w/ losing customers.
If the game that you developed *sucks*, and people only buy a used copy, and/or the majority of people resell their $60 copy for $10-$15, who is really losing money here? *The consumer!*
You can't blame the consumer for your game sucking, and you can't blame the consumer for not wanting to spend $60 on a new copy, if they know the majority of people think it sucks.
There are, of course, the cheapskates who would far rather spend their money on a used copy 3 months after the release. News flash: They aren't going to submit to being forced into buying $60 games due to DRM. These are the types who will instead ditch their console and just download cracked PC versions. Either way, you'd never see their money to begin with.
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Solutions:
Do nothing. Rights are more important than their profits.
Other than for steam sales, Origin sales, Gamersgate, and GoG sales where they see massive spikes in unit turnover. They're willing to let that happen (and, admittedly, with Steam they just sort of do it, and if that means you now get 59 cents per copy of your game sold rather than 3.50 well tough shit for you, and if steam didn't you they were doing this sale, so they ran out of keys and delisted your game, well, tough shit for you, even if you get them new keys in two hours they may not relist your game for weeks, tough shit for you). Publishers are quite agreeable to significant reductions in sales prices generally, as long as they know they can actually sell at that price.
Retail is a whole other problem because you really can't do retail for much less than 30 bucks a copy, you're losing to much to fixed costs and distribution at anything less than that. Unlike movies where publishers are happy to print a million discs for something that will barely sell 50k units, and if it doesn't sell they can repurpose the jewel cases (the expensive part) for another title with a game the box and manual are game specific and you can't afford to eat 40k in inventory that doesn't sell let alone a million units in inventory. Notice game manuals are next to non existent except in collectors editions now? That'd be why.
With gamestop it doesn't matter what your price is. Their price is always lower. Always. That's how used works after all. Unfortunately this starts 1 day after release, whereas we wouldn't mind so much if this happened day 21 or preferably day 90. Whether or not people would pay 30 bucks for your game when one was available used for 25, versus 60/55 is hard to say, but it used to be that gamestop was *the* place to have your game, have launch agreements etc. Now it's downright toxic, and you only do business with them because they're still about 25% of gaming retail. If you could could make money without ever giving them a box and only selling through a digital distribution service you will, because gamestop isn't in this to make games, they're in this to fuck you and take your money. Customer or supplier. EA has gone so far as to build their own store because they figure (probably correctly) that in the long run they'll be better off without gamestop, who were ~25 of their total business, and without losing 30% to steam and just distribute through their own store, than to have to deal with both of those hassles.
The PSN and XBL are slightly different animals, because you may have to pay them to push out patches or the like. That makes part of the pricing a matter of guessing just how much money this will cost you if you need to patch it vs how many copies will sell, and for example the Wii U won't give you a cut of sales until you hit 6k copies (which can be tough for an indie dev).
The first major iteration on how to deal with this has been DLC. Which ranges from 5 dollar horse armour to full blown expansions that you download for cash. With DLC the publisher and developer definitely get something, so it can that the only money you make on your game is from a 10 dollar DLC, and the 40-50 dollar release basically just puts the DLC store in the hands of players. Which is a sad way to think about your lovingly crafted game. The next step has been full on online distribution channels (steam, origin, gamersgate, GoG, direct2drive, impulse - now owned by gamestop etc.).
And yes, both the mentioned steam scenario and the thousands of copies in a warehouse happened to companies I worked with recently. Well the thousands of retail copies not that recently, that was 4 or so years ago. Printing all of those copies what a significant chunk of the total development budget (~15%), and they ended up in a warehouse, where, as far as I know they still are.
Publishers aren't stupid. Well, ok, they are. But not entirely as stupid as we portray them to be. They aren't going to commit to lowering prices when they don't know what the licencing fees will be (which by the way, m
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
In what way is the current system "fundamentally broken" ? They sold 609 million units last year just in games for the Wii, PS3, Xbox360, DS and 3DS. That's a lot of money for the industry. At the same time, I have tremendous choice as a consumer. Even just on the 360 there are a lot more good games than I have time to play. Add to that everything available for phones, pads, and the PC both in retail and electronic distribution and it is a great time to be a gamer. If there are developers and publishers that are losing money because they spent a bunch of money on a crappy game, that isn't the fault of the used game market. People have been predicting for decades that the tremendous and rising cost of producing and promoting blockbuster movies was too high and that studios would fail and fewer movies would be made, but I see no evidence that there are fewer movies available. If console makers go through with their plan to kill the used market, it might make them more money, or it might convince consumers to spend that $15-30 they would have spent on a used console game on some other platform. Or they may not be as willing to pay the $60 for the new game if they know they can't sell it for $30 when they are done with it, so, again, they may choose to buy a $5 app. that keeps them entertained for a week. It is a huge decision for console makers, with big effects, but let us not pretend they are fixing anything.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Let me put it to you, what do you think of the creativity of the music industry over the last ten years compared to what it was before the Internet (pick a decade)? Do you think it's more exciting to go out and listen to live music now, or back in the day?
Are you kidding? Live music is better now than it's been in decades. All my favorite bands from the 70s and 80s, like Styx, Foreigner, Rush, Iron Maiden, etc. are touring these days and I've seen far more concerts in the last 5 years than in the rest of my life previously.
Of course, if you're talking about new bands, forget it, they all suck. But now's a great time for guitar rock concerts. The main concern is that a lot of these musicians are getting old and won't be doing this forever. After they retire or die, it's going to be all over for live music, except maybe classical orchestras and the like (which generally play music much older than the rock bands).
They should just require dongles like some of the really expensive software.
Dear Richard Browne,
Go fuck yourself.
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Stop distributing them on CD. CDs are so nineties.
Here in the real world
What is the "real world"? Would it suddenly become a fake world if nothing was done?
I don't know what you're talking about, but doing nothing is very much an option.
The stores are the problem
They're simply selling used games. I have no intention of ever agreeing with you if you're saying they should be punished for that. Even if the entire game industry goes under (it won't), I have no intention of restricting the right to resell games.
instead of the gaming industry
You mean instead of the people that have a problem with well-established rights? Reminds me of the entertainment industry demanding that other companies (like Google and ISPs) protect their IP for them. Pure arrogance.
Compare these two hypothetical situations
Even their cohorts in Hollywood allow movie theaters to have a second run of movies after they are getting stale with lower ticket prices. The used to be $1 theaters, but now they're probably closer to $3. Basically, in the world of media and media related products. The older something is, the less you can get from it. These really are depreciating assets. If you don't want GameStop to profit by selling a used copy of your game for $5 less than new price, cut the damn new price. Used game prices are a much better reflection of the true market value of these games. The publishers have unrealistic ideas of their games market values.
Car manufacturer Richard Browne has come out swinging in favor of the rumored remote disable features in the next years model PlayStation Orbis and Xbox Durango.
'The real cost of used cars is the damage that is being wrought on the creativity and variety of cars available to the consumer,' Browne writes. Browne's comments echo those of influential engineer and Raspberry Pi designer David Braben, who wrote last month that '...pre-owned has really killed commuter cars. It's killing daily driver cars in particular, because they will get pre-owned, and it means your day one sales are it, making them super high risk.' Both Browne and Braben conflate hating used car dealers (a thoroughly reasonable life choice) with the supposed evils of the used car market. Braben goes so far as to claim that used cars are actually responsible for high car prices and that 'prices would have come down long ago if the industry was getting a share of the resells.' Amazingly, no car manufacturers have stepped forward to publicly pledge themselves to lower car prices in exchange for a cut of used car sales. Car companies are hammering dealers (and recruiting insurance companies to do the same) because it's easier than admitting that the current system is fundamentally broken."
I'm sure that Mr. Browne has never sold a used car that he was tired of driving in order to subsidize the purchase of a new car (or better yet, a beautifully maintained, low mileage used car). I mean, "...pre-owned has really killed [strike]core games[/strike] new car sales. It's killing [strike]single player games[/strike] sports car sales in particular, because they will get pre-owned, and it means your day one sales are it, making them super high risk."
Be careful. The Fedgov already hurt the used car market with cash for clunkers. Don't think they wouldn't do a used game buyback and destruction program if they believed the terrorism angle.
The reason to upgrade the hardward generally comes down to improving graphics and processing power. The added work for things like high end physics and AI is not an especially big hit in terms of development expense though. What is driving the cost upward is primarily the high res 3d graphics.
Creating high quality 3d art is extraordinarily labour intensive, and the tech to improve the toolset for the artists is not advancing as fast as the ability to push more content to the screen. If you increase the polygon count of your scene from 100 000 to 10 000 000, the labour requirements get difficult. Just watch the credits from a game made in 2001 and compare to a game made in 2012. The size of the art teams have gotten proportionally much larger compared to the size increase for the programmers.
Also, the assumption that the CEO's are getting hookers and blow is not universally true. If you produced one of the top 3 games of the year, sure, people are getting rich. If your outside the top 10 though, the development costs are eating enough of the profit that its a crap shoot on whether or not your broke even.
Used games and piracy have eaten a great deal of the profit margin for games that were good but not great. Lowering the price might actually be a good idea, but if your barely breaking even your going to have a hard time justifying the move to share holders who are seeing only marginal profitability.
In any case, change is coming because the iPhone / iPad is forcing it. All the companies that cannot compete at the $60 a game core market are starting to chase the lower dev costs for the mobile devices, and the bigger companies that see 'easy money' are following them. In any case, the long term move is to cut the retail outlets out of the game distribution entirely. Once that happens, your pretty much F*cked for buying used games anyway.
END COMMUNICATION
prices would have come down long ago if the industry was getting a share of the resells
AH-HAHAHA... yeah! Right! I guess we can chalk Braben up as one of those idiots that are good in one area that think they know what the fuck they are talking about in other areas. What a clueless fuckstick to make a comment like that.
Cause that line worked with CDs and all other media that preceded games and continues to be sold today. Oh wait.. not it hasn't. It has never worked, ever with any industry. The prices will remain high as long as people continue to pay the prices. They will only drop when people stop paying prices. Claiming otherwise is just idiotic. Making that claim and the used game market is utterly laughable and makes my opinion of Draben go straight to the toilet (yeah, like he cares, I know). What a dumb ass.
I own about 80 to 100 games between my XBox 360 and Playstation 3. Around 50% of them are new (or 50% are used, depending on your perspective).
NONE OF THEM ARE PIRATED.
And yet I'm made to feel like a bad person for buying a used game, which really, really offends me as a paying customer for many years. I'm not sure I will even buy one of the upcoming consoles.
While you're at it you can pledge to buy your clothes at thrift stores and eat out of dumpsters.
I *DO* buy many of my everyday clothes (obviously not underwear or other such personal clothing items, or "dress" clothes like suits/ties) at thrift/second-hand stores, and I take what would go in that dumpster (my organic garbage) and compost it and use it to grow food.
As an extra, I also collect spent brass casings and shells and reload them for my firearms. I don't hear ammo makers whining over "lost sales". They make money selling reloading supplies & equipment. Maybe the game companies should take a look at that business model.
I also never buy new games.
What was your point, again?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Cars are just those things that can't really be sold at very cheap levels with the requirements they demand in terms of construction, testing and so on.
That's a load of dingo's kidneys. What can't be done is make shitloads of profit selling cheap cars. That's why the American auto industry is always trying to sell us faster and flashier cars -- there's a lot more profit for something which costs little more to make.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The Fedgov already hurt the used car market with cash for clunkers
Not really. Most of what got crushed was shitty old gassers nobody can afford to fuel. Lots of BMWs and Mercedes with V8s, lots of 3/4 and 1 ton trucks with V8s around eight liters... No one was going to buy those cars anyway, at least not for any kind of significant money.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Avid Old School Bioware fan here. I have BG1, BG2, KOTOR, NWN(all expansions).
I stopped buying when they started with DLC to devalue used products, or try to force you to buy early, or get locked out of DLC. No coincidence this was after EA purchased Bioware.
I perceive this as attacking the customer. If you attack me, you are never getting another dime from me again.
I haven't purchased DLC/DRMd/Server locked game, and I never will.
I haven't bought a new game since 2005. I expect I won't again, except maybe $1 to $5 apps, since I consider that a free price for a rental.
But I will never pay $50-$60 to a locked down game. If the keys to play are elsewhere, that is a rental, that could be revoked at corporate whim.
I have been buying used games since the 8bit NES. If it was such a problem, ie: something to compare to terrorism, then why didn't they shut down used games in the early 90's? It's been my general observation that people that make apocalyptic claims are generally full of shit. I don't think there's any reason to think these people aren't.
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... There's all of the indie game developers putting out quality material nowadays (some like Dungeon Defenders, etc) being BETTER than the "AAA" stuff and showing everyone how much these guys are lying and in for it for nothing but the money.
QQ moar.
@Mindless Drivel: 100% of Twitter posts ever Tweeted.
Get 'em right here.
Oh yeah, there's music there too. Have I said enough to get Slashdot shut down for linking, and armed men in black uniforms sent to my house to terrorize me? No? Well, how about a few more links:
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
used games help create the money-glutton powerhouse that is today's console game industry. unless the prices drop drastically, i suspect this will not bode well. killing what's left of the rental industry too? nice. real fucking nice. i guess we should be happy we don't have to insert a quarter every time we play..whats that? it's in the works? figures...
...
Retail is a whole other problem because you really can't do retail for much less than 30 bucks a copy, you're losing to much to fixed costs and distribution at anything less than that. Unlike movies where publishers are happy to print a million discs for something that will barely sell 50k units, and if it doesn't sell they can repurpose the jewel cases (the expensive part) for another title with a game the box and manual are game specific and you can't afford to eat 40k in inventory that doesn't sell let alone a million units in inventory.
OK stopped reading here. You don't know what you're talking about.
First of all, jewel cases are never repurposed, way too much labour involved. Just scrap the lot if needs be and send it off to the recyclers.
Secondly movie DVDs retail for well under US$10 a piece. Often half price. Books are similar, printing is cheap. Package of DVD+book shouldn't cost more than about US$10 retail, unless publisher is greedy. And 50k pcs is enough to have a good economy of scale on manufacturing. Distribution doesn't matter too much, it's usually piecewise or boxwise anyway, and shipping to the shop goes combined with other orders.
Notice game manuals are next to non existent except in collectors editions now?
Good, less paper to take up space. You can also advertise this as "saving the trees". A digital manual does not take up much space, it usually fits on the same disc as the game - great. If only hardware manufacturers did that ... though I think they do, other than a quick setup guide (which you may need to read before the computer is operational enough to read a pdf) the rest of the manual is on the driver disc. TV/audio equipment still comes with full manuals - instead the manuals should be on a CD, so they take up less space and can be found more easily (I would copy all of them to one CD or just keep on a hard drive - that way I could find the manual quickly and not need to keep it near the device).
I haven't seen game in boxes locally too, just the disc in a DVD case, pretty much like movies. I have no problem with that - less paper to take up space or throw out.
With gamestop it doesn't matter what your price is. Their price is always lower. Always. That's how used works after all.
I bought used monitors, tape decks, servers, UPSs and other equipment because of the price (and some devices are not made anymore). The manufacturers are for the most part still in business. If your games is so short that it can be finished quickly and has no replay value or is just bad, then of course people will want to sell it. I can return broken equipment (or even if it works as intended, but for some reason I do not like it, as long as I decide than in 14 days) for a full refund. Can I return a game? Oh, right, I can't. If your game is good then people will play it instead of reselling it immediately.
Maybe this is why used games are so popular - no returns. When I buy a used device, I cannot return it, even the warranty given is a few days, useful only if the device stops working when I bring it home. When I buy a new device, I get 1-5 year warranty and the ability to return it for any reason in 14 days. Games are sold without warranty (and without even the promise that it will work, even if the game disc was blank, I couldn't do anything) and no way to return them (and most games are bad), so the "new" has no advantage over "used". Of course, I could pirate the game, see if it is any good then buy it, but by pirating it I make the developer lose at least a billion dollars, so me buying the game afterward will still result in almost $1G loss.
I buy games on steam for up to 10EUR. Anything more expensive and I just wait for the price to drop or a Christmas sale or whatever. If the game is bad, well, I lost 10EUR, a bit much, but survivable. OTOH, if I want to buy some device that is more expensive, I study it really carefully - read reviews, get the user manual to find out if it has all the features I assume it does (I once bought a VCR that cannot output the tape trough the RF port, while it wasn't a deal breaker, it is an annoyance) and sometimes may even download the service manual to see if something is as I assume it to be (and nothing is written in the user manual) - older devices are easier, since the schematic is easier to trace to find out. This may take me a few days to choose between various options or to see if a particular device is useful to me.
What a fucking load of horseshit. If they were giving out prizes for the biggest load of horseshit this crap would walk away with the blue fucking ribbon.
+Not really. Most of what got crushed was shitty old gassers nobody can afford to fuel.
Because it totally makes sense to buy a $20,000 car to save $1,000 a year in fuel costs.
You can either dump the sales for 2 or 3 dollars for dvd's and get your materials cost back, or ship them to china and re purpose the jewel cases. Seriously. We can do this in markets where you use standard jewel cases (notably the middle east) as game developers, but they are small enough its not worth the bother. Console games can though because Xbox/PS3 use standard cases now, so you can have 500k units to re purpose for a few cents a case (which is less than their production cost).
The box for a game runs us about 3 dollars with another dollar or 2 for distribution, depending on from where to where (european publisher to north american for example will be up in the 2 dollar range). Gamestop won't touch your game if they aren't getting 7 or 8 dollars a copy, and much below that your inventory vs units sold becomes cost prohibitive if you're only moving 50k copies to 15-20k retail outlets. At least from a developer perspective, the publisher remember is taking some (something like a 50/50 split). Take a 30 dollar game, write of 10 bucks for getting it into a retail location and it you have to move a lot of wasted copies into the retail chain that you can't really afford to make.
Notice game manuals are next to non existent except in collectors editions now?
Good, less paper to take up space. You can also advertise this as "saving the trees". A digital manual does not take up much space, it usually fits on the same disc as the game - great. If only hardware manufacturers did that ... though I think they do, other than a quick setup guide (which you may need to read before the computer is operational enough to read a pdf) the rest of the manual is on the driver disc. TV/audio equipment still comes with full manuals - instead the manuals should be on a CD, so they take up less space and can be found more easily (I would copy all of them to one CD or just keep on a hard drive - that way I could find the manual quickly and not need to keep it near the device).
I haven't seen game in boxes locally too, just the disc in a DVD case, pretty much like movies. I have no problem with that - less paper to take up space or throw out.
Yes, and it's not like people read manuals anyway. Though you're wrong on the advertising. No one, not customers, not distributors care, in the slightest. But the removal of manuals was precipitated by costs (having to print and ship manual costs a lot of money for what is today no value). But collectors editions still have manuals or art books or the like because those customers want them.
With gamestop it doesn't matter what your price is. Their price is always lower. Always. That's how used works after all.
I bought used monitors, tape decks, servers, UPSs and other equipment because of the price (and some devices are not made anymore). The manufacturers are for the most part still in business. If your games is so short that it can be finished quickly and has no replay value or is just bad, then of course people will want to sell it. I can return broken equipment (or even if it works as intended, but for some reason I do not like it, as long as I decide than in 14 days) for a full refund. Can I return a game? Oh, right, I can't. If your game is good then people will play it instead of reselling it immediately.
Maybe this is why used games are so popular - no returns. When I buy a used device, I cannot return it, even the warranty given is a few days, useful only if the device stops working when I bring it home. When I buy a new device, I get 1-5 year warranty and the ability to return it for any reason in 14 days. Games are sold without warranty (and without even the promise that it will work, even if the game disc was blank, I couldn't do anything) and no way to return them (and most games are bad), so the "new" has no advantage over "used". Of course, I could pirate the game, see if it is any good then buy it, but by pirating it I make the developer lose at least a billion dollars, so me buying the game afterward will still result in almost $1G loss.
I buy games on steam for up to 10EUR. Anything more expensive and I just wait for the price to drop or a Christmas sale or whatever. If the game is bad, well, I lost 10EUR, a bit much, but survivable. OTOH, if I want to buy some device that is more expensive, I study it really carefully - read reviews, get the user manual to find out if it has all the features I assume it does (I once bought a VCR that cannot output the tape trough the RF port, while it wasn't a deal breaker, it is an annoyance) and sometimes may even download the service manual to see if something is as I assume it to be (and nothing is written in the user manual) - older devices are easier, since the schematic is easier to trace to find out. This may take me a few days to choose between various options or to see if a particular device is useful to me.
Yes, exactly, but when you buy for 10 euro 7 euro goes to the publisher, which means 3.5 goes to me. (hence my 3.5 dollar example....). When gamestop resells, I get nothing. When they resell 10x over I get nothing x10. I migh
Imagine if movies sold were watched once, returned, and resold over and over. That's essentially what happened to the games business. But movies have special rental licencing arrangements games that never really worked with.
But that's the thing - if I want to watch a movie only once, I can rent it much cheaper than buying new, watch it and then return it. Some years ago I watched a lot of movies this way.
If I want to try out a game legally, there are not a lot of options. The licensing arrangements (or lack thereof) are not really my concern as a customer. Also, I think it is legal to resell movies (I bought some on laserdisc a few years ago), however, the rentals are providing the service quite well, so people do not need to "rent" movies by buying them with intent to resell the next day, so there are few stores that specialize in buying/selling used movies. So, the only people who sell movies are those who bought them with the intention to keep (otherwise they would have rented them) and sell them a long time later (selling the DVD to buy the Bluray, need the space/money). Still, eBay is full of used movies (on any format), and music.
Also, the majority of music I buy is in the form of used records. The reasons are price and the fact that even if there is a CD release of the music, it is usually remastered to make it sound modern, but I like the originals more. I also borrow records and tape them. Or tape music off the radio (even if I wanted to, I cannot buy most of the songs that play on the radio, because my favorite station does not announce the song title).
New game: 60. Gamestop pays 40. Resells used for 55. If you drop your price to 50 they buy at 30-35 resell at 45.
On the other hand, maybe more people would buy the game initially when there are no/few used games returned. Or more people would buy the used games so there would not be enough of them for everyone, so some would be forced to buy new.
When gamestop resells, I get nothing.
When the guy sold his Sony GDM-FW900 to me, I'm pretty sure Sony didn't get a penny.
So I'd rather sell to you on steam for 10 than to you through gamestop for 50.
So how about making the Steam price 10 instead of keeping it pretty much same as the retail? I'm sure that would pull a lot of people away from buying used games. It would also drastically reduce the new retail sales, but, as you say, you get more money from Steam. So why are you not doing it?
Actually, this is one of the things that I have been thinking - with retail, you need to make the disc, box, ship them to the store, that has to cost something. So why download prices are the same as retail, even though I do not get the disc/box/etc when buying a download.
So if used game sales are driving up game costs for single-player games, why aren't we seeing the games that are primarily multiplayer selling for cheaper?
Does it really cost $30 per copy just to get a game into the stores? That sounds like a ludicrous amount considering we can ship bananas from South Africa for fractions of a dollar per unit. Also, games never used to cost anywhere near the amount they currently do (even adjusting for inflation), and that was in the day you got full manuals and custom boxes, not just a printed sleeve in a generic black plastic case. Why has the cost increased so drastically, and why, if this is indeed the case, is this not the thing the industry are devoting their time to solving, rather than increasing the prices on the consumers in the middle of a damned recession!
The funny thing is, not only are they $60-70, they honestly aren't of the quality that some $20-30 "indy" companies like Nippon Ichi or XSeed put out, to say nothing about true indy games out there.
The interesting thing is that I suspect that if you adjusted the cost of a 1986 NES game for inflation, you would end up at modern game prices. I don't recall hearing people complain too much about the cost of carts back when I was a kid. People who where 14 and wanted the top 10 games just got a paper route and bought them. I agree that the quality of many triple A titles is very much lacking these days, and I think that is the real problem. I have no problem paying $100 for a video game that provides me with 100+ hours of entertainment, and that is the problem with a lot of games. Price is no guarantee of quality, unfortunately.
I have a theory that the 8 and 16 bit games era was the golden age of video game design, because the hardware resources were so limited. They had to design the hell out of games to make them work and fit in the systems of the time, and I will speculate that they spent a lot more time thinking carefully about core mechanics and fun. I can fire up a compiler nowadays and have my computer rendering 60+fps on a 10k poly count model in about an hour. That doesn't mean that the resulting game will be well designed, though.
The light at the end of the tunnel is that the market will find its level, and wherever we end up there will be games. On the way though, there will be some companies that are eaten by a grue.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Wait a minute. Game Designer? Here's the original article Browne wrote. Read his bio at the very bottom. The guy is a friggin' exec. No wonder he's bitching about lost sales to used games, how else is he going to explain his company's lack luster performance?
Online prices do not go down as fast
But they do go down fast. DXHR is $30 on Steam today, and that's the "regular price" - it can be had even cheaper when there's a sale, like there was a couple weeks ago. And the game is less than a year old... do you expect them to slash the price by half by the end of the first month, or what?
There's plenty of good new bands touring around, too, for varying definitions of "new", and depending on your tastes. Hell, there was that Paganfest in U.S. just a few weeks ago.
The fact is, most people want to play through a game once. This means that there's no shortage of used games on the market, which drives prices down, and that most people don't care too much about wear and tear, so long as it makes it through their first (and only) playthrough. There's no reason why the used game market shouldn't be eating heavily into profits. I should also point out now that people who buy and sell used games are doing nothing wrong. They are well within their rights, and I hope nothing I say below will contradict this.
Now, a lot of people here, as to be expected, are going to dismiss this as more industry whinging, but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem. You must remember that every big ticket game is an investment, and that every blow to profits will impact how many are made, and how much effort is put into the ones that are made. Basically, there will always be consequences, whether or not we want there to be, no matter how dearly we hold onto the right to sell used games. This means it's important to actually think about it; to weigh options, rather than to just knee-jerk and automatically take the side against the people you hate.
I myself am undecided. On one hand, I buy my fair share of used games (although I tend to hoard them and play some again rather than resell), and I would be very sorry to see the used game market dry up. On the other hand, a lot of the same logic behind copyright applies (albeit less strongly) to stopping used sales. Like with copyright, in the long term, there is no significant detriment, since the alternative makes the contested product infeasible. What's the point in having the right to copy something that doesn't exist? Similarly, what's the point in having the right to resell something you can't buy in the first place? If certain works become infeasible to produce, then everyone loses. Not just the studios, the developers, and their first sale customers, but also the people (like me) who buy them second hand (and, I guess, even the people who pirate them). The only people who at least break even are those who don't buy them in at all in the first place.
I know that some people will applaud the death of the bloated, overpriced, overproduced, under-creative AAA game, but their personal preference is hardly the point. Not every choice must satisfy every consumer. As usual, if you don't like something, for whatever reason, you do not have to buy it. That doesn't mean that it's a good thing that nobody can buy it. If there is demand for it, then it is something that we don't want to lose. Of course, if we want even more what we're giving up instead (i.e. first sale rights on AAA games), then we'll just have to eat the loss. Either way, we are losing something of value, which is a sad, but as of yet unavoidable state of affairs. Like I said, it would be sensible to consider both sides and make an informed and rational decision about what is more valuable to us.
Please mods, this is not a troll. As always, I am simply trying to invite a healthy debate on the topic, and not turn it into a matter of foolish pride and revenge (which most issues surrounding Big Media seem to be). If you disagree with me, please reply. I would be more than happy to debate with you, to listen to you, and hopefully, be proven very wrong!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
*note: enable sarcasm detector to read this post; it's a jest*
Go ahead and hold your tournament, while I hold my own "What Would Idi Amin Do?"[1] Tournament:
Monkey Ninja Pirates versus Katana wielding Richard M. Stallman BattleDroids.
and....
MAFIAA lawyers versus SCO's lawyers, both lawyer teams armed with crotch bats and 'Go Fish' indictments.
Then we can have the winners face off in a sudden death match of Unlikely Proportions(tm) to decide who rules the internet memes!
[1] bumper-stickers to be available at the arena
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Forgive the use of an overused phrase...... :-) ;-)
That was totally awesome, dude!
and...
Thanks, I needed that, and a Good Day to you also.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
The comment about games being cheaper if they were not resold is ridiculous, it's purely about greed with the publishers wanting to sell more copies at over inflated prices. Publishers are greedy, they want to make more money without improving the quality of their products, and they certainly dont want to lower their prices even if it would mean significantly higher sales.
If games were cheaper, there would be less incentive to resell them.. If games were better and had more longevity, there would be less reason to resell them either. As it stands many modern games are expensive and quickly become boring, so people resell them in order to recoup some of the money they spent in the first place. There are also people who rent games from places like blockbuster, many games simply don't provide enough entertainment to justify the full price but are good enough to play for a day or two at the rental price.
The problem is that the big expensive games have huge amounts spent on designing the graphics etc, but often lack playability or longevity. If these games spent less on fancy graphics, and released the game for $1 like many mobile games i'm sure people would be happy to pay that and play until they got bored, and wouldnt bother trying to resell the game.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
You should be a SCO/RIAA/MIAA lawyer or politician; if you are not, you have missed your calling....
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
It's a game that only a 13 year old would play and it will give him the opportunity to tell everyone he slept with their mother.
Because it totally makes sense to buy a $20,000 car to save $1,000 a year in fuel costs.
Only a small percentage of the total used cars in the USA were crushed. You can get a loan to buy a car, but it's difficult to get a loan to buy fuel as the car is its own collateral but you plan to burn up the fuel. But you're engaging in the logical fallacy of the false dichotomy. The choice is not between a shitty gasser they would not buy anyway, and a new car. The choice was between a car they couldn't afford to operate which they wouldn't buy anyway which has now been crushed, or a used car which gets better mileage. I've *seen* the kinds of shitpiles that were crushed, and the only cars which weren't technically shitpiles were semi-modern German cars which might as well have been much older given their quality. German cars haven't been reliable since the 1980s, so poor people buying used cars can't buy used ones anyway since they will get nickeled and dimed to death. There's nothing more expensive than a cheap Mercedes. Ask me how I know.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You can either dump the sales for 2 or 3 dollars for dvd's and get your materials cost back, or ship them to china and re purpose the jewel cases. Seriously.
No.
You can trust me on this - it's my trade. Well, maybe I should say "was" as over the past decade the volume of CD/DVD and related material has gone down by at least 80% so I rarely deal with it nowadays. That includes the disks (mainly rejects from production) and complete sets (with casing; mainly surplus stock).
Complete disks are rarely exported due to copyright restrictions. These are usually ground up before selling to the recyclers.
The same for completed sets: these are either shredded, baled, or saw cut to make them unusable as product. Re-using the jewel case, or the DVD box? Forget it.
Games are essentially luxury items. But they are luxury physical items in the sense that they fall under the first sale doctrine. Let's compare them to other luxury items that fall undert the first sale doctrine, like say... a rolex. Expensive physical objects, such as rolex watches, being resold don't cause their respective industries to cry foul, but this is because those objects have inherently longer useful lifespans, which justify to some extent their costs. Also those objects decay with age.
Because of their digital nature, games and the media they're on don't decay within the useful lifespan of the first sale. So to solve their 'problem' game producers should make their games more replayable. They also need to rethink their pricing. $60 games are the rolexes of the gaming world, but they don't give you anything comprable to a rolex. A rolex supposedly gives you quality, for a life time. A $60 game gives you nothing more than a $20 game. It can be just as crap. Game producers and distributers need to realise they're not selling luxury items, they're selling commodity items. Choose the price point accordingly.
Whether it's a house, car, music, or game when we tire of it, or want new, better of different it's just common sense to sell it.
You want to kill the used market make every game release a downloadable version way cheaper after two months. Problem solved! The industry will still get their first day sale in and peoples on a budget will still save money. B&M stores are getting screwed but let face it these guys are going the way of the dodo anyway. Also if you guarantee that whatever device you release later we will still be able to download and play the games that we bought from either PSN or Live in this current generation I think customers will feel a lot safer shelving money and bandwidth for Downloadable.
Fuck you Richard Browne, just like I said fuck David Braben when he said that shit. It's partially on the head of the console manufacturers, they demand a large chunk of money and games have to cost $50-$60 just to make any profit at all, so no wonder why people buy used. Funny how every other form of recorded media (books, music, movies, TV shows, etc) have been perfectly fine out there with people able to sell used. Why is it only game devs that can't handle it?
I understand that game devs need to get paid. However, restricting the rights of people regarding your product is the wrong approach to take.
FC Closer
Yeah! And while you're at it, quit working on any other hobby and grow up! People shouldn't have fun in life once they reach adulthood, they should just work and work and die.
FC Closer
Another company to avoid purchasing anything from.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
yea AND you have the pleasure of waiting on their (shit) servers and your (shit) internet while downloading it, whoo hoo I paid full price and it only takes a day and a half to download IF I reformat my hard disk
win win, I hate steam
All the companies that cannot compete at the $60 a game core market are starting to chase the lower dev costs for the mobile devices
How have developers adapted to the mobile devices' control challenges for each of the various genres? On a device with a flat multitouch screen and no directional pad or dedicated gaming buttons, you can't feel which onscreen button your thumb is over. And poor control means a low average rating for your company's games.
People who where 14 and wanted the top 10 games just got a paper route and bought them.
But how many 14-year-olds in the same neighborhood could have a paper route before the local newspaper company found itself overstaffed? And with people getting their newspaper on an e-reader because it's greener, what business should children affected by child labor laws be getting into nowadays?
According to the license agreement one game purchase is one license so according to Ubisoft in order for your wife or children to play the game you have to buy a separate copy for them.
That's been the case for the vast majority of multiplayer PC games for years: one PC, monitor, and license key per player, no split-screen, no spawn installation.
All consoles have DRM. So what DRM-free game should I pull out when my friends are over if I don't want to have to buy and maintain four gaming PCs?
Project Gutenberg
What will Project Gutenberg do once all notable books in the English language that were published before 1923 have been transcribed?
I doubt it, since while everyone seems annoyed, no one really cares quite enough yet. But with the advent of buying a game, and then having 15 minute DLCs at 1/4 the price (so eventually a few minor additions cost more than the original game), or with the new fun scheme of first day DLCs (seriously, how do you justify that), when will people just say "Phhhhtttt!"? This is just for single player games; obviously multiplayer games have a better cost/replay value.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
If I were to have them bring their laptops, I'd have to buy each of them a copy of the game, but I'll grant that that's easier when Steam sales are going on. But more importantly, I'd first have to buy each of them a gaming laptop, as opposed to a laptop that's designed for homework and Facebook. Consoles are far cheaper than that. And consider the case of someone who left home without a laptop because he didn't foresee in advance getting an itch to play a video game.
It's the case for consoles too [...] One console, one game one user.
Tell that to my copy of Super Smash Bros. Brawl: $12.50 per player at launch.
What kind of Pentium 4-era dumpster bait are your friends using?
Their computers are either just that (or perhaps early Pentium M) or something with comparable clock speeds and comparable instructions per clock to a P4 (Atom netbooks). What they already have runs homework and Facebook and emulators of 8- and 16-bit consoles.
Most people with computers have multiple computers: Either you have a desktop and a laptop
Unless the second computer is a laptop with an Atom CPU and an Intel GMA, which I thought we all knew stood for "Graphics My [body part]", or something similarly dumpster-dived or Craigslisted.
An alternative doesn't have to be 100% better at every individual thing in order for it to be better on net.
On net, you get opponents calling you what I'll politely express as "body part" or "British word for cigarette" or "rooster lollipop" or "vaginal cleansing product". That's why I often prefer in person.