We are told that pre-owned game sales are bad for the industry: they deprive publishers of revenue, with the proceeds of the sale lining only the retailers' pockets. According to one retailer, however, pre-owned benefits publishers as well.
The claim comes from Mike Mauler, executive vice-president of Gamestop International. "I can understand the feelings," he tells us, "[but] we've sat down with developers and publishers and really gone through the data. I personally think there's a lot of benefit to the publisher.
"A great example is sequels, where there's a large percentage of people who are just not going to spend $60 every single year without being able to do something. They'll look at their shelf and see ten FIFAs, Pro Evos or Maddens.
"Being able to take the older one and do something with it in order to buy the next version is really important to consumers. That drives new sales quite a bit."
One increasingly popular way for publishers to ensure they don't miss out entirely when a game is bought second-hand are the online passes, requiring buyers to cough up an additional fee to access certain features - typically online modes. Yet according to Mauler, they don't necessarily have the desired effect.
"Our data says that used customers play a lot less online than new customers," he explains. "The number's very low - like 15, 20 per cent." That claim makes sense: online components are at their most welcoming in the days after release, but as the weeks and months roll by the casual players drift away, leaving only a core of regular, high-level players who know the game. Instead, Mauler says, used buyers are more likely to buy DLC.
While he understands developer and publisher angst, Mauler believes that, to an extent, the industry only has itself to blame for the popularity of pre-owned games. "We the industry have done it to ourselves," he explains. "We take all the great releases and put them all in a two-month period.
"If you're an FPS fan, you look at all the games that are coming out this fall, and you'd have to be pretty wealthy to buy all of them. There are going to be people who buy Battlefield 3, and they're not going to have €60 for at least another month or two…they're all coming out so close together."
It seems a fair point, and one often overlooked by publishers who fail to acknowledge - at least publicly - the link between a cluttered release schedule and the increasing importance to retailers and customers of trade-ins and pre-owned sales.
Just last week Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg said: "I believe that as many great games as this industry can make, that's how many people will buy." He may have a point, but while publishers continue to cram the bulk of their major releases into the final few months of the year, some of those great games will, inevitably, fail to sell to expectations. Do you rely on trade-ins to fund purchases of new games? Do you think publisher discontent is justified, or misplaced? Let us know in the comments below.
Comments
9I used to buy 10-12 new games a year, but that's probably down to 4 or 5 now, if that. That's primarilly because the 2nd hand prices fall so fast, that you get next to nothing for a trade-in, making games purchasing that much more expensive. It's gotten worse since the online pass came in, use the code and the value of a game just falls off a cliff. So now I'm only going to buy a few new and the rest 2nd hand. I'm not fussed about online. As the article says, for most players there's no way of getting any joy from playing against the hardcore players. Most of my friends share the same opinion and we're starting to organise ourselves so that we share games. Of course this means we can't play against each other online, but that's ok because we're hanging out together more now. The downside for the industry with that plan is that we're only buying 1 between us rather than multiple copies we would have.
It's been a good thing in a way, I'm playing games that I would otherwise have missed, (just paid 87p for Motorstorm on Amazon Marketplace!) but I think the industry is being short sighted in trying to force customers to act in a certain way. It's only going to affect their revenues and aside from the resession, I think this is another factor as to why games sales appear to be lower.
With Onlive coming, Steam etc, is Gamestop on the way out anyway? Online second hand prices can't be beaten by retail shops. I feel digital distribution is the future, like music and more and more films, why not games?
Gamestop know this, which is why they've purchased Kongregate and Impulse.
Whereas, UK's very own GAME Group continues to slide into irrelevance.
I've never liked the idea of downloading games for a console when I can purchase a solid copy for my shelf to show to myself how large my collection gets. I've never bought anything second hand, a trait that runs in my family. I like ripping of the plastic and being hit by the smell of new, as well as knowing I'm funding X company that made X good game, so they'll be able to make another one, rather then one copy going between 2 and 5 different re-sales.
Also, I've never 100% completed a game, and I can't do that if I go selling them all the time, can I?
I don't fancy paying for a download game, which I can't sell on. I like the online renting idea, with Onlive you can pay for a few days access at a time, no real need to own it, like streaming music with spotify, or renting a film off itunes.
The 100% completion is an interesting point. One of my friends has to get as many trophies as possible and has to play the game at the hardest level from the start. She doesn't understand my idea that games should be enjoyable and not a chore, so unlike her I'm not keen to play the same level all day til I do it. That's not necessarilly skill, that's more often luck.
But I think there's a gap between what a publisher thinks a game is worth (based on production costs) and what a gamer thinks a game is worth (based on enjoyment and how much they get out of it).
I'm very much in the habit of selling a game to part fund the next one. By buying 2nd hand and selling them, at the moment, I'm not far off gaming for free. Which I admit is no good for the industry, but the games companies need to think of ways to keep people playing rather than ways to shore up their own business models.
With super expensive, oversaturated AAA titles, no wonder used is king.
Release bare-bones versions for free(ish). Then let people buy new chapters, online, co-op and so on. Everyone gets, and pays, for what they want. Second hand is killed. Everyone except GameStop wins.
Even if there was a brand new copy of a game and a second hand copy for 50% less, I'd still go for the new one. Smells nicer.
And to Sigge, don't they do that already, just you have to pay £30 or so for the disk?
They're not as bare-bone as they should. If a game on disc, or as a download, was a glorified demo before you started picking from the smörgosbord, and if it cost £5, that would be something. You get a few single player levels of Gears of God 7, but you pay 10 for co-op, 10 for multiplayer and so on. You get an AAA title, but you pay less if you play less, and more if you play more. The used market would be reduced to a fraction of the game cost, and the dev would benifit from almost every buyer, first or second or third.