Preowned Games ate my baby.

[schild]

You can save 10% if you sign up for our fake club.

[Llava]

I fear this will go unseen because of the Derka Derka Derkaing overshadowing it.

But good article.  I have little to no opinion on the subject, unfortunately.

[schild]

Yea, I should've posted mine second. Errrrrrr.

I thought of that, but I'm just a humble site admin.

[Strazos]

Fuck Madden.

[Llava]

Fuck Madden.

Oh right, I do have ONE opinion.

Fuck Madden.

[stray]

Eh, if you're a sports fan, there's really no choice. I hate to say it, but:

I love EA.

As for the rest of the article, I didn't understand a word of it. I also just woke up, so give me some time..

[Trippy]

Video game publishers know what's going on with the buying and selling of used games. They would like to stop it if they could but unfortunately there's the doctrine of first sale that's preventhing them from doing so though I'm sure to them and the other major copyright holders that's just a temporary impediment to their eventual rewriting of copyright laws to their complete liking.

If we assume the finance guys at the video game publishers are not idiots then we have to assume they know how much money they are losing from the secondary resale market and have determined that at the moment the money they are losing is less than what they would lose in money and reseller "goodwill" if they radically changed their pricing model. Remember that at the moment video game publishers need companies like EB, GS, Wal-Mart, etc. to get their games to the consumers. Pissing off the resellers would not be a great strategic move on their part, at least not until electronic delivery is ubiquitous. If EB & GS need to resell used games to be able to eek out a profit, well, that's a sacrifice the game publishers are willing to make, for now. At some point in the future if used game sales continue to increase the publishers may be forced to change their pricing strategy and/or how they deal with their resellers but for now everything is presumably copasetic.

[Murgos]

Ubiquitous digital distribution.

At least then the profits are being lost directly to people who use the product even if they are pirates (thus still accumulating mind share and fanbase).  At this point I see physical packaging and storage of digital media as nothing but a leech on the worlds resources.

</manifesto>

 

[Nebu]

What I care about is that two weeks after a game comes out, the preowned variant will be outselling the new copies 2:1. Two to One. Sure, I may be a little off there depending on what area of the States you hail from, but I’m fairly confident everyone is in agreement.

I read the article 3 times (yes three) and this is the line that stuck in my head.  This begs to ask: Why are people selling their original versions back after such a short period of time?

While I agree that the secondary market is an injustice to the hardworking people that make these games, it's as unavoidable as the sale of used anything.  Being that I tend to be morbidly interested in human behavior, I wondered what it would be about new games and/or the generation of new gamers that had them flocking to obtain the latest titles only to sell them back in 2 weeks.  Now I'm sure that a portion of this may be due to a secondary rental market (i.e. Blockbustrer buys 20, rents them for a couple weeks and sells off all but 2 or 3), but the majority is due to lack of prolonged interest.  Do people have such a short attention span that they bore with games this quickly?  Are gamers now such gluttons for content that they devour it as fast as possible only to spit it out on a new customer? What's at the root of the issue here?  My knee-jerk guess is that it's either consumerism at its finest or a showing of disappointment.  I know I've held onto every game that I had some affection for and could possibly blame this on the annual versions rendering the game even more disposable.  The fact remains that we see this behavior with other titles.  It just got me to thinking...

On a side note, why can't they make an American football sim as good as the sims for other sports? <*cough* Championship Manager, Diamond Mind Baseball, etc.*cough*>

[MrHat]

Because EA owns American Football.  And EA hates gamers.


Schild, very enlightening article, thanks.

[WayAbvPar]

I don't do pre-owned, except with automobiles. And porn. Hand me down porn is like Christmas.

[Paelos]

I didn't even know where to buy preowned. I get all games via THE INNNNNTERNET.

[Strazos]

I don't do pre-owned, except with automobiles. And porn. Hand me down porn is like Christmas.

Same here, but I will never get a pre-owned auto again if I can help it.

[Sky]

Ubiquitous digital distribution.

Mandatory broadband? No thanks, I've had broadband for only two years of my life, and will probably not have it again after next year when I move into the hinterlands. Digital distro sounds great to people with broadband, sure. It's screwing everyone else I have issues with.

Obligatory fuck Madden. bb2k,b.

As far as trade-ins, for most of my gaming friends, who are primarily console gamers, it's simply the Way It Is. New game comes out, you take in 3 or 5 old games and buy the new one.

I like to save my old games, so I've never done so, but I probably should trade in a bunch of games I didn't like and won't play again (I'm looking at you, Fable).

I do agree with the bit about games just being too expensive. I don't mind dropping $50 on a game I know will kick ass eight ways to sunday (I'm looking at you, GTA:SA). However, for most titles, I'm uncomfortable dropping $30, even. And that's where the big distro channels fuck me (and you), an EB/GS merger will only make it worse, since occasionally one or the other might have an older title the other doesn't. It's no slight on folks making the games, I do want them to get paid...I just can't afford more than a couple games a year at full price, and I find shallow games like Doom3 or HL2 charging $55 pretty ludicrous.

In the most recent case, I'm talking about Silent Storm. Cool game, just didn't fit in the budget at full price. Waited for it to hit the bargain bin, and it didn't, it just disappeared. Now I can buy it used on Amazon for $30. That's not happening. I only hope for a jewel case version someday.

After all these years of gaming...I'm becoming a jewel-case shopper. Only the good titles will get bread from me, everything else is bargain bin or bust.

[Sky]

On a side note, why can't they make an American football sim as good as the sims for other sports? <*cough* Championship Manager, Diamond Mind Baseball, etc.*cough*>

Bring back Front Page, beyotch?

[Sairon]

I always read up on games before I buy them, so that I can be pretty damn certain if I'm going to get my moneys wort or not. By paying $50 for a game which is crap you're supporting crap games, and leting them know that they can get away with it. Since the overall quality is pretty fucking low I'd hate to see it geting even worse.

[stray]

Preowned for me on just about anything possible. Cars, furniture...I don't care. Especially music gear (hey, sometimes you'll get a little mojo in that deal as well!).

As for games: Usually if I like a game, I'm going to like it A LOT. Enough to rush through in 3 or 4 days (I'm mainly speaking about story based games here. Things like sports, racing, fighting, or Tony Hawk are another story). I don't see a $50 value for 3 days of entertainment, so I'll buy a preowned copy if it's available.

I'll also sell them once I'm done....As much as I may have liked them, I don't hold any kind of sentimental value to them. Nor am I collector. And if I don't like a game (which I'll know within 30 mins of playing), it'll be back at the shop within the week.

So why don't I rent instead?

Most of time the games are gone, and when I buy/sell preowned, I'm usually only losing a few dollars compared to renting. That, and I'm impatient.  

Anyways.....So what if the game industry's hard working folks are losing money here? That's not my problem. I have my own cash to worry about. Everyone does..

[Sairon]

$50 for 3 days of enjoyment is pretty damn good in my book, most games aren't fun for more than 10 minutes anymore though. Just going to the cinema here costs like $8 and that's like 2 hours of enjoyment. Of course you can't 100% look at in that way since for example kebab pizza, which is the holy grail of food, costs about $7 and only lasts like 20 minutes while still often being better than a trip to the cinema. Anyway, I'm geting slightly off topic here but $50 for 3 days ration of enjoyment isn't that bad imo :P

[tazelbain]

because that $5 they saved will net them a second term fetus-sized burrito

Freebirds?

[Paelos]

because that $5 they saved will net them a second term fetus-sized burrito

Freebirds?

aka. Chipolte, Qdoba, Moes, Willy's, Barbaritos, Flying Burro

[stray]

aka Southside San Antone 

[HaemishM]

Lots of things to say, I'll try to list them numerically.

1) Games cost too much. Across the board. They cost too much to make, they cost to much to buy as a consumer, and they cost too much to a retailer to sit on the shelf for more than 2 weeks.
2) EB merging with Gamestop SHOULD, in theory, be a good thing, because they SHOULD have almost if not more purchasing power than Wal-Mart does, meaning they should be able to really beat the shit out of Wal-Mart on pricing. I mean like 10% or more. But they won't, because they won't have to. It'll mean their margins on new shit will be much, much lower, but their prices will remain the same, which is generally better than Wal-Mart on new shit.
3) #1 is a truism because the amount of enjoyment most games will give a gamer is too short. The games are disposable, for the most part. A single-player, non-sports game? Might get a month out of my casual gameplay time at best. Sports games have to be cyclical because of the changing rosters of major sports today. However, these games are charging way too much for nothing more than a roster update and some new theory about how to make the game play more like its real-life counterpart. First-Person Football is the first new feature that really made it worthwhile to get a new game, and that was 2 iterations ago. Very little new under the sun on these sports titles, and not nearly enough to justify the $50 price tag.
4) Madden sucks, EA sucks, fuck you both.
5)The "hardcore" (otherwise known as early adopters by marketers) are the ones driving the industry's dollar bus. They buy the game on release, thus they make the INDUSTRY (i.e. publishers) almost all of the money in this market. The industry is totally focused on those first two weeks of sales and damn the rest. I'm not even sure which is the tail and which is the dog in the current scenario, because I see each side chasing the other. But just like MMOG raids, the % of people who will buy a $50 on release day as compared to those who wait for a cheaper price is probably very small. But again, those are the sales the industry lusts after. Well, that and the Wal-Mart/Best Buy dollars, which is a totally different market altogether. Mostly.
6) Cheaper prices would sell more games, but the retailer margins per unit would be lower. I'm almost entirely positive that the retailers would fight lower pricing schemes behind closed doors, even though they see how many more sales they get from the lower-priced pre-owned bins.

The people that are really losing out on preowneds, besides the industry itself? The developers. They see fuckall of that money. The publishers, quite frankly, deserve to get fucked on pre-owneds, because they have pretty much let the industry get bent over this barrel. I'm looking at you, EA. You fuck developers over with subsistence royalties, shitty milestone money and pubilshing deals that don't even allow the dev team enough budget to patch the fucking thing properly (HEY BATTLEFIELD 1942-2-Vietnam! HOW'S THAT QA GOING?!).  Meanwhile, you turn a blind eye to EB/Gamestop's sale of used games. Legally, sure, there isn't a damn thing they can do about it, just like record companies can't do dick to used CD stores. But realistically, EA could certainly strong-arm EB/Gamestop about it, threatening the withholding of blockbuster titles like Madden 2006. Shame on EB and Gamestop for basing their profit projections so heavily on used games, because it also hurts the industry. It hurts the industry because it perpetuates the shitty pricing scheme and quick-hit investment mentality that leaves the development teams of successful games, like Troika or Westwood, unable to pay their bills. All of that means development teams are underfunded across the board, which means companies are going out of business and we have less people making fucking games.

Direct distribution is certainly one avenue for change. But you got to make that shit work. No Phantoms, I mean shit that works. The Phantom is a great idea, but none of it is going to help if the shit is either buggy or has no games worth playing. And no matter what you do, digital distro doesn't satisfy the casual purchaser's need for something tangible, something to hold onto when they think about a game.

[Margalis]

I bought a pre-owned XBOx, big big mistake. First of all, it only cost like $30 bucks less. Second of all, it didn't work, I had to return it, and the frustration was worth more than $30 right there. Third of all, it came with a terrible 3rd party controller. Was a waste of time and money.

[Yegolev]

My favorite part was learning about the "D" in the EB computer.  Now the main reason I have to go by EB is that one girl with the big tits and peeking thong.

[HaemishM]

I forgot to mention that I will almost never buy a new game, simply because I just don't have the money to blow on a game I won't play that long. MMOG's I can make an exception for if I've played them. Console games. Fuck no. $50? The only new console games I've bought have been Fable (not a bad expense, as I got $15 back in trade when I bought WoW and I liked it) and Resident Evil 4, which was well worth it. All the others? Pre-owned. I even bought my X-Box and my wife's Gamecube pre-owned, and have had no problems with either.

[schild]

Remember, I'm not saying that preowned isn't worth it for the customer. I'm saying it's doing more harm than pirates.

[Yegolev]

I only buy new games and consoles these days.  It's not worth the hassle to me when something doesn't work, and I have this delusion that I am rewarding the right people.  It's bad enough trying to get a blue CDROM to boot in a PS2 (Save the Homeland), the scratches just make me more angry.  Also my preowned Xbox was a piece of shit.  Not that the factory-fresh replacement Xbox is some fantastical game unicorn, but at least it doesn't have dirty disk errors.

[Llava]

That's why I don't rent, and I rarely buy pre-owned.  I'm sick as shit of getting home, opening the box to find the CD scratched to fucking hell and back.

[Sky]

Remember, I'm not saying that preowned isn't worth it for the customer. I'm saying it's doing more harm than pirates.

But pre-owned is such a solid and recognizable thing. We need nebulous threats. Pirates are like terrorists, they are everywhere and nowhere, and will never go away so long as the status quo remains such. Thus we can battle them as long as we want.

[HaemishM]

Remember, I'm not saying that preowned isn't worth it for the customer. I'm saying it's doing more harm than pirates.

Shit, good television shows do more harm to the gaming industry than pirates.

[schild]

Touche.

[Jain Zar]

I rarely buy recent games preowned, only ancient and hard to find stuff.

[Sky]

I rarely buy recent games preowned, only ancient and hard to find stuff.

It doesn't have to be ancient to be hard to find, thanks to the dual colossal distro channels. If they take something off the shelf...good luck finding it.

Thus my earlier comment about not being able to find Silent Storm, a fairly recent game, outside Amazon.com's used program (and I'm not paying $30 for used title).

What is one to do when trying to find a truly out of print title like the Alien Crossfire expansion for SMAC? I even tried downloading the abandonware (the right solution imo, Firaxis wouldn't help me), but it didn't install correctly and borked my SMAC.

[MrHat]

I'm jonesing for some madden

[HaemishM]

They have drugs for that.