Publishers Frustrated With Second-Hand Sales 113
Via Joystiq, a look at MCV into the increasing frustration publishers have with second-hand game sales. From the article: "As pressure has increased this year on sell-through and pricing of new
releases, so games publishers have become more sensitive about the size of
the pre-owned market - which is believed to be worth as much as £50m a year to leading chain GAME and possibly £100m across the market as a whole. Publishers have agreed to discuss privately what action may be possible to stop the trend, either under the auspices of trade body ELSPA or simply via legal protection." We've already reported on Epic VP Mark Rein's opinion on reselling games.
Morons. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Our business model isn't as profitable as it could be, let's outlaw competing with us!"
Isn't the point of capitalism that you're supposed to fix that yourself instead of bribing a politician to do it for you? The software industry already has a lot of special rights that should have been taken away long ago (beginning with that "it's not a sale, it's a license" crap), they don't need more.
Why do we sell games? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you'd make a DECENT GAME to start with, I wouldn't want to sell it.
Give me a break (Score:5, Insightful)
This is ridiculous. You don't see car manufacturers trying to stop people selling second hand cars.
These people need to get it through their thick heads that once you've sold something to me, it becomes my property. You can't have it both ways. If you offer something for sale, then give it to me in exchange for money, then it's mine. And if it's mine, then it's mine to sell.
And don't give me any bullshit about "selling me a license". Do you say "buy a license NOW!" in adverts? Does the box say "License to play Gran Turismo" on it, or does it say "Gran Turismo"? You are selling the game, not a license.
You really want to make people stop selling second hand games? Fine. There's a legal way of doing that. Make them sign a contract when they buy it. That'll stop people selling second-hand. Why? Because they won't buy it in the first place, you eejits!
Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
If you stifle second hand game sales you also stifle new game sales with the same stroke.
Sam
I've bought 4 games in the last week (Score:3, Insightful)
The real problem as I see it is the console manufactures (Sony et al) have been dragging their feet too long on this generation. The latest stuff just isn't that much better then the backlog of games. It doesn't help when big name titles like Soul Calibur III aren't any better than their predessesors.
Re:Give me a break (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not about revenue. The point is that when a second sale is made the costs to the publisher go up.
Publishers have to pay for their 1-800 support lines, multiplayer servers, online community, etc. Have you played a Live! enabled game yet? The goal is to provide value to the player long after the sale of a game is made.
You are selling the game, not a license.
No. We are selling an experience, a community.
Car makers only allow transfership of warranty under strict guidelines. Publishers haven't decided what they think their guidelines should be.
I speak for myself, not my employer.
Re:Morons. (Score:2, Insightful)
Not that I think more laws would actually solve anything, petition the government to add the following to any second-hand sales legislation:
Employees of any company in an industry whose members restrict second-hand sales cannot trade-in or sell possession which were purchased new. This includes: electronics, computers, cars, and houses.
What's good for the goose, right?
- Tony
Overpriced shitty product. (Score:3, Insightful)
Drop prices. Grow your market. (Score:3, Insightful)
If new games were in the $20-$25 range, I'd have a lot more games (and probably play more often).
Now the real question is, are there enough guys like me out there to justify charging half as much for the game to make the profit on volume?
And how much less will resellers have to charge for a used game at that point? Is it even worth it for them to sell used games at $10?
Re:Give me a break (Score:5, Insightful)
No, you're selling a box with some optical media in it because that's what I get for my money. I don't buy a good evening from Wolters and I don't buy a vacation in France from Opel.
The argument about causing more loss is only true if we assume that all copies resold would have gone into the trash instead because otherwise there'd still be a user attached to them causing you that loss. Assuming there's any actual loss caused by people owning the game, of course.
The obvious answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe EA's just wants their practice of dumping yearly sports franchise revisions to be supported by retailers, despite the obvious used game trend it creates.
Re:Overpriced shitty product. (Score:3, Insightful)
They could also try making games so replayable that no gamer would ever want to get rid of a game once purchased -- but that would be unlikely to improve sales of new games. They could also make games so short that people go through them like, uh, candy -- buy game, play game, sell game, all in the space of a week or month. Even with a secondary market, those games would quickly fade out of existance once everyone's played them. But you'd have to lower the prices for this to be of any interest, and
Solution? Increase the cost of primary-market games, get all your profit for the next ten years out of the way, and then stop making games. We'll probably all be better off.
Wait, that's not quite it. (Score:3, Insightful)
This causes the publisher to lose out on a sale for every used copy of the game sold. The game could be the best one made ever, with every gamer intending to buy a copy in the first place, but it won't sell well enough to keep the publisher afloat if the majority of the sales on it are used.
Granted this requires a lot of gamers to sell their copies in the first place, but I can kind of see where the publisher is coming from in this regard.
Either way, resorting to legal action and the whole "you're buying a license, not a game" crap is quite stupid, so I hope it doesn't come to that. My personal fear is that we're going to resort to locking down games to only play on one system and never run again on a different one (it's been discussed), or games actually degrading in quality over time forcing used copies to display their age after they've been played previously. Then we're just enforcing a superficial limitation on the digital medium, which is a smaller part of the overall digital copyright issue in the first place (falsly limiting otherwise limitless resources under the pretense of actual, lost material wealth).
Re:Give me a break (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why do we sell games? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Drop prices. Grow your market. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes. And they do: when console games hit a certain rate of penetration, the Big Three turn them over to "Platinum" status, slash the System Licensing cost to a few bucks, and let the publisher re-release the game at that magic price-point of 20-25 bucks.
Is it worth it for them to do this with new games? Hell no. Market research demonstrates that casual gamers such as yourself almost never know when a new game is coming out anyway, don't read the magazines where those dates are advertised, and don't frequent the websites that hype them (although, since you're reading Slashdot Games, you might be less "casual" than you'd like to believe). So releasing a new title at a lower price point doesn't gain the publisher anything: they can release it at full price, wait while your hardcore friends play it and tell you how great it is, and by the time you decide to see what the fuss is about, the price is already in the sweet spot.
And if your gaming friends aren't playing it and telling you how great it is? Then you probably wouldn't buy it even if it was $20 on launch day.
This second-stage of a console game's life is extremely profitable for the publisher: sales volume typically goes way up. But it doesn't work with new games. I was at Atari when they considered releasing a title at a $25 price point for launch: the problem is that hardcore gamers see this as a sign that the game isn't good (not because we released it cheap, but because they hadn't heard much about it and, seeing it at that price point, presume it's been on shelves for months and wasn't selling), and casual gamers don't hear about it from hardcore gamers, so they don't give it a second glance. It's not impossible, mind. [ign.com] But it doesn't usually pay off.
Re:Give me a break (Score:3, Insightful)
What are you talking about? Please explain to me how one person buying a game off of another one--one cumulative user per copy--is costing the publisher more? Is the first person who no longer has the game to play for some reason still calling the support line and getting into the server?
Or--are you talking about the first person illegally copying the game to use after they have sold the first copy? Well, shouldn't the licensing key or whatever is on every single freaking game today prevent that? If not, aren't you talking about piracy here rather than abuse of a publisher's 'magnanimity?' Your statement is preposterous and based only in greed as far as I can tell. Suck it up and review the business model before you complain about publishers losing money when people do what they have an absolute right to do.
Oh, and by the way--I'd like you to explain to me how providing an online community forum which is used by everyone and their grandma is something other than marketing dollars well spent. You want people who aren't playing to go on there and use it--it creates a potential (probable) base for customers. That's business. It costs money to make money.
...which comes in the form of a media with content on it and perhaps a server connection fee. Spare us the corporate-marketing-drone b.s. please!
Right now, for example, Blizzard charges for the media that has the World of Warcraft game on it and then they charge monthly to login to their server. If I stop paying that monthly cost, sell my copy of WoW to someone else, how is Blizzard entitled to any more money that what they'll get when they start getting that monthly fee paid to them again? They are making all the money they possibly could deserve (and then some). Frankly, I'm acting as an extension of their sales department by hooking up another steady revenue stream to their money funnel. The should be writing me a freaking check for assuring them another year of dough after I would be long gone.
Assuming we're both in the U.S. here: if I buy a car or a book then I can sell it to someone else. That's all there is to it.
Good for you.
If they weren't so overpriced.... (Score:3, Insightful)
And even for people who are willing to spend $50 on a game, not everyone is able to spend that much at once all the time. If someone was going to buy a $25 used game, they now have to wait until they've got another $25... And in that time, they might decide they are just better off borrowing it from a friend or renting it.
Of course, I have no idea how I'd get SNES games, seeing as how no one rents them anymore, and you can't even get them used except on eBay.
Let's review some basic microeconomics. (Score:3, Insightful)
Similarly the publisher might only be willing to sell a game for $40 if it knows that the game will not be resold in a way that will stifle an average of $20 of original sales. Otherwise it might only be willing to sell the game for $60.
So it's not entirely clear to me what advantage publishers think they will get from banning resales. If they think customers are willing to pay the same amount for less benefit -- that is, a game with no resale value -- why don't they just increase the price of the game instead of lobbying for legislation?
Sounds to me like this guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
Re:Give me a break (Score:2, Insightful)
Besides, users will install a piece of software more than once unless it sucks so bad they'll never dig it out again.
Re:Give me a break (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering the (old, inactive) accounts itself, we are talking about a few records in a database. That means some cost but in the age of multi-gigabyte drives it should be small enough to be no trouble to the publisher.
Matchmaking happens at runtime and is no issue at all for inactive accounts.
Auto-Update probably happens once per installation (simplified) and I guess is the most significant cost involved here. But when the initial release comes with reasonable quality, the amount of data transfer needed should still be acceptable.
Years after a game is sold there is still a team in place for play balance updates and patches whenever a new video card or set of drivers is released. If people are not buying the game first-hand anymore this support will stop.
In most games that rely on box sales only, this sort of support stops after a short time anyway. You will get patches for a few months but then you are left with whatever the last patch offers. Companies like Valve (who supported CS for years) are an exception.
For subscription-based games, like most MMORPGS, your argumentation fails completely because a few months of gameplay cost as much as the box. If one of these games is re-sold, the subscription fees from the buyer will pay for the support.