Shops "defrauding the industry" - Braben

By Oli Welsh Published 30 October, 2008

HMV's pre-owned games move "shocking".

Frontier founder and creator of Elite, David Braben, has said that he thinks HMV's move into selling pre-owned games is "shocking", and that the increasing emphasis on the pre-owned market is a serious threat to the games industry.

Speaking to Eurogamer at the GameCity festival in Nottingham, Braben said: "The shops are not giving us a way of distinguishing between pre-owned and new. So the shops are essentially defrauding the industry."

Braben, in Nottingham to talk about the making of Frontier's WiiWare hit Lost Winds, acknowledges that the prevalence of pre-owned games is one factor pushing his company towards digital distribution.

"We've got a lot of retailers eating our lunch and refusing to sell full-priced games. I've been in a shop where I've tried to buy a copy of a relatively recent game, and I've taken an empty box off the shelf and they've given me a pre-owned copy. That, I think, is disgraceful," he said. "Not holding stock of new games, substituting them with pre-owned games at the same or much the same price... That is really destroying the shelf-life of our games."

On HMV's move into selling pre-owned titles - the first non-specialist retailer to do so - Braben said: "That is shocking, and I think the games industry has to do something about it soon."

"There are a lot of studies that suggest it's anywhere between 8 and 12 or 15 times a pre-owned game goes round. If you think that the industry's getting a tiny percentage of those 12 or 15 sales - typically from the sale of a GBP 40 game, the industry only gets GBP 20 anyway, in round figures. That is lost to the system," he said.

He's not a proponent of DRM - "personally, I detest DRM," he said - but understands that publishers are being forced into a corner. "Look at EA. They have been crucified for the admittedly draconian DRM on Spore, but they're in a very difficult position. They need to do something."

Instead, he argues that the games industry should move to a similar model to that used by the film industry for DVD and video sales. "They brought out rental copies, and copies not for resale or rental. That distinction is really important in the video market, and all of the chains honour it because they know it's more than their life's worth not to," he said.

"My argument is that for every game there are two versions. One is personal, not for resale and it's made abundantly clear you can't sell it. And it's made available for something like GBP 25. And a resale and rental copy, which in film is actually about GBP 80."

"The key thing is to find a way where actually we give the benefit to people who have original copies," he argued. "It's a very small step to make games distinguishable - it can be done with serial numbers. I'm not talking DRM or anything draconian, but we can give stuff to the person who has a new game, and we can start tipping the balance."

Braben also thinks that the pre-owned market, along with piracy, is pushing developers and publishers towards exclusively online gaming strategies.

"This isn't really special pleading, it's a practical point of view, because otherwise the industry will be forced to go 100 per cent online, and I also find that a shame," Braben said. "I love single-player games. Getting a beautifully crafted single player experience is something that's going to be killed if we're not careful, because the online validation of online games means that they tend to get pre-owned a lot less."

GameCity runs today, tomorrow and Saturday in venues across the centre of Nottingham. We'll bring you more from the festival in the coming days.

Picture of Oli.

About Oli Welsh

Oli is Eurogamer's acting deputy editor and reviews editor and likes to take things one word at a time. He is among the best dressed people in South London.

Read more articles from Oli by visiting the Oli Welsh archive page.

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Comments (251) Latest comment 3 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Marshall2008 #1 3 years ago

    If you want to buy a NEW copy of a game then you should get a NEW copy of a game. If some yokel store grunt is passing off per-owned gear as new then that is fraudulent.

    Game & Gamestation have stickers all over the game boxes/covers and manuals denoting pre-owned status and HMV should be doing likewise.
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 14:52

  • optimusprym8 #2 3 years ago

    There are already "Not For Resale" versions of games out there, typically those that come bundled. However any glance at a shelf in GameStation or CEX will show lots of the PGR3 and GoW ones

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #3 3 years ago

    Whine, whine, whine. You already sold the game. You got paid for the lunch. It belongs to someone else. What they do with it after that, how many times they sell it, how much for and who to is none of your business.

  • Cappy #4 3 years ago

    I don't recall writers getting their knickers in a twist over secondhand books, I don't recall Stephen Spileberg having an apoplexy over secondhand VHS sales of his films. Secondhand sales are a reality that other media have to live with, I don't see what makes games so fragile and in need of special protection.

    How about bringing the prices down? If the prices weren't so ridiculous I would have bought more games instead of having to choose just three titles for the last quarter of this year. Nobody wants smeggy secondhand copies but games often don't have a very long shelf life and by the time I can afford it, secondhand copies are either difficult to resist or all that's available.

  • botherer #5 3 years ago

    I hope to see Braben protesting outside his nearest jumble sale in the near future.

  • seasidebaz #6 3 years ago

    You know what else is a serious threat to the industry?

    People talking about games despite having not brought one out in the past 8 years, then saying that pre-owned is killing the market.

    Well done, David. *slow clapping*

  • S.J.Rogers #7 3 years ago

    ''On HMV's move into selling pre-owned titles - the first non-specialist retailer to do so''

    I think you will find Block Buster to it too...

    /Tips Hat.

  • jamespo #8 3 years ago

    Nowhere near as much of a problem as pikies with pirate copies

  • northernlights #9 3 years ago

    Im not making enough money. Wah Wah Wah ! The second hand market funds terrorism, u watch that will be the next thing. What Id imagine he would love is everyone pays £49.99 for a game, i.e RRP and you cannot sell it or lend it or even have a mate around your house to play it.

  • Cadence #10 3 years ago

    This Braben dude seems to moan a lot.

  • defdaz #11 3 years ago

    What a load of bollocks. Dear me. Makes him sound like a fascist. Ban civil liberties! Prevent people selling anything once they've purchased it! Crown Elite as the GOAT!

  • Lebowski #12 3 years ago

    It's been said a million times before but here we go again:

    MAKE A BLOODY GAME THAT PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO SELL!!!

    FFS, CoD4 is still £40 pre-owned; there's a REASON for that, you dumb fecker.

    Now shut-up and get on with the next Elite, then you'll get your lunch money.

  • Blackthorned #13 3 years ago

    He's fighting the tide on this one - it's supply and demand.

  • galerian86 #14 3 years ago

    GBP25 full-priced game! By God, make it happens, I won't resale my games no more! I swear!

  • attacanteblue #15 3 years ago

    I'm sure I'll get crucified for this - but as someone who works for an independent games studio - you lot really haven't got a clue how tight money is for developers. Think we are all getting rich off the proceeds from games? Bollocks are we! We are struggling to make a living as every penny is squeezed from us in retail, and with piracy and pre-owned markets.

    Make better games!? Yeah? With what, tuppance?

  • PlugMonkey #16 3 years ago

    I don't recall writers getting their knickers in a twist over secondhand books, I don't recall Stephen Spileberg having an apoplexy over secondhand VHS sales of his films. Secondhand sales are a reality that other media have to live with, I don't see what makes games so fragile and in need of special protection.

    Name one high street book, music or film retailer that sells 2nd hand copies of the books, music or films right alongside and instead of the new copies. And then I'll conceed that the situation between the mediums is the same.

    Your time starts...now.

  • Thamuhacha #17 3 years ago

    I think one possible issue is that reception this interview would receive on, say, Gamesindustry.biz and the reception it is getting here are a bit different.

    I very much doubt his comments were directed at a consumer gaming audience.

    And comparisons with books and films are a bit unfair. If Waterstones were buying second hand books and ranging them in the prime areas in store in preference to first hand stock, the book publishers would blow their stack. What the film companies would do if HMV started selling loads of second hand DVDs doesn't even bear thinking about.

    It's obviously beneficial to HMV because if they sell a used game for £20 they get all £20 ... a level of profit they'd never match from a publisher.

    And with most publishers advocating a move to digital distribution at some point (Steam, XBLA and PSN are the obvious starting points) then there's basically a war brewing.

  • chrisjm #18 3 years ago

    8-12 times? i just dont 'buy' that figure.

  • zuljin #19 3 years ago

    @Rev. Stuart Campbell
    "Whine, whine, whine. You already sold the game. You got paid for the lunch. It belongs to someone else. What they do with it after that, how many times they sell it, how much for and who to is none of your business."

    And by selling the games second hand they are taking away sales which actually contribute to the people that make them. I'm not saying ban the practice, but I can understand where he's coming from.

    @Lebowski
    I bought COD4 brand new £25 quid 1 month after release.

  • Dizzy #20 3 years ago

    Maybe games are too expensive??? Noooooo that can't be it.

  • gribb #21 3 years ago

    HMV marks clearly on all preowned products that they are in fact pre-played that may be the issue. Every other entertainment medium has to contend with second hand purchases, it just seems like game sector seems more vocal on the issue. If you really don't want people to trade in games then follow Criterions route and make downloadable content people actually want, or much easier make your game actually worth owning.

    I'll be trading in Mercenaries 2 tommorow to get some money off Fallout 3, why? Because Mercs 2 is an incredible average game, not something I wish to go back to in years, scratch that, weeks to come. Developers and publishers need to try harder by either supplying game codes with each of their games that link to online profiles, or alternatively stop moaning like little children when retailers want a piece of the interactive profit pie.
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 15:11

  • t8yman #22 3 years ago

    either

    1) make your games better, so the consumer wont want to part with it

    or

    2) make retail games cheaper, dont give me the "cost" bollocks, some games gross more than movies, for a fraction of the production and distribution costs.

    or

    3) STFU

    take your pick.

  • udat #23 3 years ago

    I think he makes some sense, and if you follow the current trend of retailers preferring to sell pre-owned software instead of new software, eventually the diversity of titles will suffer as the most populist titles will be the only ones with shelf space. I'm not sure I agree, but he's not a raving idiot, and it's an issue worth thinking about.

    I'm not sure why Braben is being pilloried just because he thinks he has identified a situation potentially damaging to the industry and is talking about it. There seems to be a knee-jerk negative reaction to any statement of opinion (or possible necessity to change) made by just about anyone these days.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #24 3 years ago

    Make better games!? Yeah? With what, tuppance?

    I'm not sure that good games are inherently any more expensive to make than mediocre ones. But this is simply the industry's business model coming back and biting it on the arse. If games weren't completely unjustifiably priced compared to other entertainment media, there wouldn't be a significant second-hand market in the first place. How many High Street stores do you see devoting half their shelf space to used DVDs and CDs?

    Make games cost what DVDs do and you'll obliterate the problem. Some of us have been telling you that for 15 years.

  • chrisjm #25 3 years ago

    waterstones dont sell 2nd hand books, but we have librarys where you can just take them for no money at all.

  • DFawkes #26 3 years ago

    FRAUD ACTION!

    Also, lower game prices.

  • t8yman #27 3 years ago

    cost to make peggle - 20p, time I played it for = hours and hours and hours and hours, and still do

    cost to make crackdown - not that much relatively speaking - time i played it for - see above.

    cost to make GTA4 - bajillions of dollars - time I played it for - about 20 hours, got very bored.

  • Rpt81 #28 3 years ago

    Woolies did pre-owned too, for a while. Managed to get a fair bit off them for old titles in the past, and pick up a load of "fake" pre-owned stuff for about £4 each too.

  • chrisjm #29 3 years ago

    going back to the 8-12 times figure (which i just do not see any truth in). this would mean that digital distribution could quite happily sell a £40 game for £5 and still increase profit.

    not going to happen is it.

  • jack_klugman #30 3 years ago

    I don't recall writers getting their knickers in a twist over secondhand books, I don't recall Stephen Spileberg having an apoplexy over secondhand VHS sales of his films. Secondhand sales are a reality that other media have to live with, I don't see what makes games so fragile and in need of special protection.

    Don't be an idiot. Games aren't like books or movies, which don't only have multiple post-release revenue streams (films: cinema releases, DVD releases, licensing for television screenings; books: republishing deals, optioning rights for production in other media), but, unlike games, don't have a VERY RESTRICTED shelf life relative to other media. A game, at best, only really lasts about six months at full price at retail. The price of books goes up relative to inflation - War & Peace will set you back over a tenner most likely. A film you could buy on VHS twenty years ago, you could buy on DVD ten years ago and you can buy online or on Blu Ray now.

    And like Braben indicated the movie industry is VERY PROTECTIVE of how you go about legitimately redistributing their material.

    Buying second hand games fucks over the people making those games, lines the pockets of the retailers and, ironically, is probably a factor in pushing up new game prices.

  • Zaelsius #31 3 years ago

    Yet another reason why next-next-gen consoles and games should go all digital distribution.

  • daz_john_smith #32 3 years ago

    ]attacanteblue wrote:
    "I'm sure I'll get crucified for this - but as someone who works for an independent games studio - you lot really haven't got a clue how tight money is for developers. Think we are all getting rich off the proceeds from games? Bollocks are we! We are struggling to make a living as every penny is squeezed from us in retail, and with piracy and pre-owned markets.

    Make better games!? Yeah? With what, tuppance?"

    Its a fair point and a understand your pain, but that's an issue with Publishers and Retailers not giving Developers what they deserve and we the customers shouldn't be punished for that with restrictions on what we can or cannot do with a product we have legally and legitimately purchased, nor should we have the pre-owned market taken from us.

    "PlugMonkey wrote:
    cappy wrote:
    "I don't recall writers getting their knickers in a twist over secondhand books, I don't recall Stephen Spileberg having an apoplexy over secondhand VHS sales of his films. Secondhand sales are a reality that other media have to live with, I don't see what makes games so fragile and in need of special protection.

    Name one high street book, music or film retailer that sells 2nd hand copies of the books, music or films right alongside and instead of the new copies. And then I'll conceed that the situation between the mediums is the same.

    Your time starts...now.""

    I really have no idea about books since I generally buy all my books online (although Amazon do sell 2nd hand right next to brand new), however with film/DVD Blockbusters sell brand new and 2nd hand right next to one another.
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 15:25

  • PlugMonkey #33 3 years ago

    How many High Street stores do you see devoting half their shelf space to used DVDs and CDs?

    THAT'S EXACTLY THE FUCKING POINT YOU DIV! THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT BRABEN IS TRYING TO POINT OUT TO YOU!

    If HMV started selling second hand DVDs the movie studios would go apoplectic and stop selling to them. It'd be financial suicide. You don't think there's a market for 2nd hand DVDs and CDs? Have you tried looking on eBay? They're there all right, but they're not in the highstreet stores because they dare not bite the hand that feeds.

    With games, for some reason, they don't seem to give a fuck. There is a storm brewing over this and it will get nasty soon, and Braben is absolutely right to point it out. It is going to shape the future direction of the industry, because the situation where retailers make more money out of a game than the developers isn't going to and cannot last.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #34 3 years ago

    And like Braben indicated the movie industry is VERY PROTECTIVE of how you go about legitimately redistributing their material.

    What drivel. In the context he's talking about they're no different to games - once you buy a DVD there's not a damn thing anyone can do to stop you selling it on.

    And sweet baby Jesus, is someone still wanking on about the old "multiple revenue streams" excuse for games being so expensive? Is it still 1994, or what?

  • Thamuhacha #35 3 years ago

    >Yet another reason why next-next-gen consoles and games should go all digital distribution.

    If the infrastructure is there for digitally distributing 50 gig of data to a million people then they'll be all over it

    But remember that you can't digitally distribute the console and peripherals in the first place. And no retailer is going to sell the console if they know that's the last time they will see the customer. The publisher / trade relationship would break down.


  • malteaserhead #36 3 years ago

    And when direct download is standard fare we consumers will naturally see some of the savings publishers make handed on to us...

  • chrisjm #37 3 years ago

    MVC used to sell 2nd hand dvd's

    DVD's and music are cheap so there is much less reason to trade them in for £1 to be able to afford the latest release. Selling them on ebay is pretty much pointless now unless its a month old release as the postage and fees will cost more than you can buy it new for.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #38 3 years ago

    If HMV started selling second hand DVDs the movie studios would go apoplectic and stop selling to them.

    Don't be ridiculous. The studios would go bust overnight if they shut off their main retail outlets. The reason there aren't stacks of used DVDs on the shelves is that the price of a used DVD is - proportionate to a new one - far higher, because the price is lower to start with. Hardly anyone would buy a used one when a shiny new one is only £3 more. When you can save £10-20 buying a used game instead of the new version, that's a much more compelling proposition, so it's much more lucrative.

  • zuljin #39 3 years ago

    @daz_john_smith
    "Its a fair point and a understand your pain, but that's an issue with Publishers and Retailers not giving Developers what they deserve and we the customers shouldn't be punished for that with restrictions on what we can or cannot do with a product we have legally and legitimately purchased, nor should we have the pre-owned market taken from us."

    Actually I think you hit the nail on the head in describing the two opposite camps arguing on here.

    On the one hand - you've bought a game, why should you not do with your property what you wish?

    On the other hand - fine, do so, but why should retailers pockets be lined twice when money should really be going to the developers?

  • DodgyPast #40 3 years ago

    He's terribly out of date regarding the rental thing with movies, not sure if the law in the UK is different to the US, but in the US once someone has bought the DVD from any source they can do what the hell they like with it.

    I hate the fact that they don't think we deserve to own games and that games should not be treated as something to collect and play many years in the future.

    If you claim that making games is some kind of art form as Braben has done in the past then the benefits of the copyright system should place an onus on you to make sure it will be available for all to enjoy once the copyright runs out.

  • malteaserhead #41 3 years ago

    jack_klugman
    Don't be an idiot. Games aren't like books or movies, which don't only have multiple post-release revenue streams

    _______

    No siree. Not on xbla or wii vc. Nope.

  • daz_john_smith #42 3 years ago

    DVD's, CD's and Books, none of these mediums are anywhere near as expensive as games and that needs to be taken into consideration. I doubt the 2nd hand markets for other entertainment media are anywhere near as lucrative as the pre-owned games market and if they were more major retailers would be taking advantage of them. The retailer's sole goal is to rape as much cash from the consumer as they can.
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 15:32

  • Cappy #43 3 years ago

    "Name one high street book, music or film retailer that sells 2nd hand copies of the books, music or films right alongside and instead of the new copies."

    There are plenty of places that sell used and new books and films etc. try Tottenham Court Road for instance. Small independent shops rather than major retail chains admittedly, but that's beside the point, people have had that choice for a long time why should it be taken away just for games?

    The problem is that games are ludicrously expensive. Often, the only way people can afford new games is to trade the titles they just finished. The industry starts cycle off itself with sky high prices, that's where the steady supply of recently released secondhand games comes from in the first place. Game sales would be even lower if people were prevented from trading in games they don't want.

    The industry has ended up cannabalising itself, games lose value so quickly that for instance, trading recent titles 'X' and 'Y' for hype of the week 'Z' actually puts you ahead since there is a massive disparity between RRP. and what people actually think the titles are worth. Play it on week one, trade it on week two, buy it back for a fraction of the price next year if you really liked it.

  • magicpocket #44 3 years ago

    Anyone, absolutely anyone who disagrees with what Braben says is an idiot.

    Quite simply second-hand games sales do have a knock on effect and could even kill developers.

    Think about it for one moment. You've made a game and it's sold 200,000 copies. You needed it to sell 300,000 to break even so you're fucked and forced to close the studio. However, 50,000 get traded in and re-sold 4 times, in effect meeting the 300,000 you needed, but you dont get the last 100,000 sales because the shop doesnt give anyting back to the publisher/developer if they're selling it second-hand.

    How is that cool?

    Someone compared this to second books sales. Idiot. It's nothing like that whatsoever.

  • Rangerwave #45 3 years ago

    @ Udat: The way you are talking, you'd think pre-owned games were a new thing....I've been trading in and buying pre-owned since I got my Mega Drive in 1994. The industry didn't implode then, it won't now.

    I agree with many of the sentiments here that games need to be good so people won't sell them. Why should I not be able to make some money back on a game that was terrible?

  • seasidebaz #46 3 years ago

    I'm sure I'll get crucified for this - but as someone who works for an independent games studio - you lot really haven't got a clue how tight money is for developers. Think we are all getting rich off the proceeds from games? Bollocks are we! We are struggling to make a living as every penny is squeezed from us in retail, and with piracy and pre-owned markets.

    Make better games!? Yeah? With what, tuppance?

    As someone who IS an independent games studio, I have got a clue how tight money is. And it isn't. Microsoft have provided me with Visual C# Express for FREE. XNA3.0 for FREE. Then I got my 3d modelling package (Blender) for FREE. And I have a free audio creation tool. Which was FREE. But I've forgotten what it's called.

    Now, I'm making games in my spare time. It will take me a whole 2-3 months to make a complete game. And that's writing my re-usable engine first. It'll probably contain about 10 hours playtime. It then goes on XBL Community Games. Then money rolls in. My outgoings: £0. My income: More than £0. Maintenance costs: £0. Therefore everything I take in is PROFIT.

    If me, on my own, can make a decent engine, decent graphics, decent sound, and people will pay for my game, then a studio which employs EXPERTS will make a game more quickly and to a higher standard than me, thus making more money than me. Fact.

  • RESIDENT_nEVILe #47 3 years ago

    So goodbye second-hand record shops, see ya later Ebay.

    Like it or not, a game is a product which the customer takes ownership of (MS and EA disagree, I know). If the customer wants to recoup some of the money that they spent on it, fair play. The second-hand games market is the biproduct, and to eliminate it would be impossible and unfair.

    If I bought a new chair and then decided to sell it, I don't think the chair-maker would complain that it was meant only for the ass of the original retail buyer.

  • McBradders #48 3 years ago

    Ugh, who let Campbell out of his cave again?

  • MaxiSleep #49 3 years ago

    I would (as a consumer) absolutely agree that the 2nd hand market in shops is distorting the marketplace badly. Lets be clear the shops are making obscene margins on these things as they dictate the purchase price.

    Of course the shops are actually signing their own death warrant by forcing software houses to opt for digital distribution which will leave people without huge fat broadband pipes up the creak so to speak.

    In conclusion anti consumer and anti developer.

  • 4thVariety #50 3 years ago

    If publishers find the used games market so attractive, then why don't they enter it? Trade used games themselves! I am sure that if GameStop can make money off trading used games, then Steam can do it too. But I guess greed is more important than a realistic outlook on you consumers and potential markets.

    And so they cling to the last white hope of perfectly DRM locked games that will retail for full price even twenty years after their original release. Sorry, ain't gonna happen. Once the ad campaign runs out, the interest in your product will drop and it will be forgotten. Save only a few games who do work on communities and word of mouth instead on inflated promotion budgets. But that's because they are actually good.

  • daz_john_smith #51 3 years ago

    Retailers and Publishers are evil

    Games should cost less

    And Developers should get what they deserve, and by deserve I mean bags of cash for the likes of LBP, Helf Life, Beyond Good and Evil etc; a shot to the head for crap like Enter the Matrix, SW: Force Unleashed, Generic Wii Mini game compilation 54, etc.

  • chrisjm #52 3 years ago

    "Someone compared this to second books sales. Idiot. It's nothing like that whatsoever. "

    Mr Writer needs £15,000 a year to live. this means his 2 books a year which he is able to write must sell 100,000 copies. he only sells 75,000 but local librarys have lent out his book 25,000.

    This is different how?


    I'm not a fan of shops selling 2nd hand at full new price and dont support it, but the industry isnt helping itself with the causes and solutions to it which harm the end user.

  • Thunderbolt #53 3 years ago

    Braben going down that road that Lars did with Napster. Not going to find much support my friend and much back-peddling will ensue.

    I can see a 'Some kind of Elite' coming out soon

  • PlugMonkey #54 3 years ago

    "There are plenty of places that sell used and new books and films etc. try Tottenham Court Road for instance. Small independent shops rather than major retail chains admittedly, but that's beside the point, people have had that choice for a long time why should it be taken away just for games? "

    The fact that they are small, independent shops is NOT beside the point. It is the ENTIRE point.

    And games are not ludicrously expensive. Did you have a look at the MegaDrive twenty year retrospective article? Do you remember how much MegaDrive games cost? £39.99, unless I'm very much mistaken. Go and put 40 quid into an inflation calculator and stick 20 years of inflation on it and see what comes out. Games are bigger, cheaper and better value than ever.

    Why are you all so determined for HMV to make a huge, great, big, fuck-off piles of money out of you while the developers are left out in the cold anyway? You EG forumites are a funny lot.
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 15:43

  • magicpocket #55 3 years ago

    The future is Gamecock and their way of letting the developer retain the IP, having a small publishing team to allow as much profit to go back to the developer as possible (they make the games afterall) and not getting involved in any of the development decisions. Oh hang on, they go bought by SouthPeak.

    We need another Gamecock.

  • malteaserhead #56 3 years ago

    Games are ludicrously expensive.

    Just used to be even more so ;)

  • Lebowski #57 3 years ago

    That was because games went to cartridge in the 16-bit era. They used to be £2.99 two years before on cassette. But the games industry kept that £39.99 when they went to even cheaper to make discs.

  • magicpocket #58 3 years ago

    Retail have too much say. They dictate the terms of what the games are going to be sold for and it cripples everyone. I really hope that one day we dont have retailers and can download directly from publishers. Steam FTW.

  • seasidebaz #59 3 years ago

    @farticus:

    Nope. Microsoft will be doing all that for me. They will be paying my profits from the proceeds of my game.

    I work as a professional developer in real life, not games-related, but a proper developer. I wouldn't class my games dev as "homebrew" either, for the simple fact that (hopefully) people will be buying my games. I can understand that premises etc. need to be paid for, but if an indie studio is getting hit by the pre-owned market then don't do disc-based releases. If they're getting hit by piracy, get out of the PC market.

    My point is that if I can make a game, by myself, equivalent to what a team of professional games developers can do, only quicker, then what the hell are they doing in the games industry? It's not rocket science. If you're not making money, GET OUT OF THE DAMN BUSINESS OR CHANGE YOUR TACTICS. It's basic economics.

  • groovychainsaw #60 3 years ago

    Interestingly, the reason why there's no retail market in second hand dvds is because there's not a big enough margin in selling them again. So sell games for less than £40, increase first time sales numbers (obviously) and reduce pre-owned sales (probably lower piracy into the bargain?)? Otherwise, you go the other way, increasing the new cost of games ever higher, whilst making your first time buyer market smaller and smaller. I can't be the only person putting off buying games at xmas because I know they'll be 1/2 the price in the sales (I've bought one or two, but there is a surfeit at the moment).
    /Edit - Apologies Rev Campbell - Just noticed you making similar/same argument earlier. Still , it holds up well eh? ;-)
    Edited by 2 at 30/10/08 @ 16:05

  • valaris #61 3 years ago

    I think from a consumer point of view, as evident from a lot of the responses here, they don't care about developers or the retailers - they just want to pay as little as possible for what they want. Fair enough I suppose.

    The point Braben is trying to make (and not very well I might add) is that retailers are biting the hand that feeds. Ignoring prices for the moment, for retailers like Game their 'pre-owned' business makes up a majority of their revenue and thus completely cuts developers/publishers out of the loop. Consumer or not, you can't honestly say thats fair for the people who make games. And you wonder why brand new games cost so much?

    Things are changing though. Games and other media are slowly migrating online. The next gen of consoles may very well be online only. They should milk the 'pre-owned' business whilst they can because their days are numbered.

  • chrisola #62 3 years ago

    Imo games are NOT expensive these days, in fact, they cost pretty much the same as they did 10 years ago.

    I was clearing out my old PC game boxes from the loft and found my Fallout 2 box...which still had the receipt inside. I paid £34.99 for it 10 years ago! Fallout 3 is £24.99 from Play.com for the PC, and £39.99 on the xbox.


    Also noticed play.com are doing a 360 elite + fable 2 + fallout 3 for £249.99..niiiiiiiice!

  • Darren #63 3 years ago

    Surely the answer is for publishers to get a small cut from the proceeds of second hand games then everyone is happy... well except for the shops not being quite so happy maybe because they'll have to pay money out but they must make more on the sale of pre-owned games for it to be worthwhile in the first place. I mean I trade games in at GAME and I often only get a fiver for them. I'm pretty sure they sell the game for more than double that and that is all profit.

    Not everyone can afford to buy brand-new full-priced games so the second hand market serves a very useful purpose and at least those people are *paying* for the games not downloading them illegally. It also a good way to find a bargain or old classic that you wouldn't find in a shop that only sells brand new games.

  • Transcendent #64 3 years ago

    If you buy a pre-owned copy from the store you are like a pirate, but stupid since you didn't keep your money.
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 15:52

  • PlugMonkey #65 3 years ago

    Kirly_Wombat - The problem in my and Mr Braben's opinion isn't so much that all 2nd hand game sales must be stopped, but when 2nd hand games flood the primary retail channels, where exactly are the developers supposed to turn?

    Look at it this way. If Game AND Gamestation AND HMV are ALL stopping their customers at the checkout with their purchase and saying "Would you like a 2nd hand copy of that for £5 less" (because THEY make EVEN MORE money that way) where does the developer's revenue come from any more? Where are the games still being sold where they see any of the money? They're being strangled at source. From the developers point of view their sales window become, what, the first two weeks?

    In music and books and films there are secondary retailers selling 2nd hand stuff, but the primary channels are clear. There is a constant influx of new material. If the primary retailers essentially stop selling the developers copies of the games, how do you expect them to survive?

  • dsf #66 3 years ago

    "Name one high street book, music or film retailer that sells 2nd hand copies of the books, music or films right alongside and instead of the new copies."

    Pretty sure Blackwell's does this for books and Blockbuster for films. Could be wrong though.

    Pre-owned goods in shops isn't unique to games: people buy stuff and when they finish with it they sell it, so they can buy something else or pay off a debt or just get rid of it from the house because it's taken up space. If it's really a problem then they just need to wise up to and mitigate those factors:

    * specifically to games, people won't "finish" them if there's a shitload of DLC being released;
    * people won't need to free up so much cash to buy new games if they're cheaper in the first place;
    * they don't take up (physical) space if the distribution is digital.

    Meh.

  • KreyAtiv #67 3 years ago

    @Marshall 2008, I totally agree with you. If you are paying the price for a brand new game, you should be getting a brand new game, not a previously owned copy of it. They should have it clearly marked that is is a pre-owned game as well as have a different section in the shop for them.
    About the "not for resale" thing, its not going to stop people lending other people their games to try out.
    Same with DVD's most people buy them and lend them to a relative or friend.

  • ronuds #68 3 years ago

    They definitely deserve a cut of the proceeds. Otherwise, what's to stop shops like Game and HMV to sell mostly pre-owned? It's almost 100% profit for them. And, let's face it, what they pay for pre-owned and then turn around and sell that same game for is completely ridiculous. It's like a 300% markup.

  • Carpathian #69 3 years ago

    I just want to know which idiots choose to go to HMV for games anyway ?

    That's seventeenth on my list of ten places and this idea of theirs isn't going to magically promote them up the list.

  • daz_john_smith #70 3 years ago

    Personally I don't really buy 2nd hand games, I do rent quite a few games though and there'll be plenty of single player/story driven games that'll I'll be renting this Christmas which once finished I'd hardly ever play again. There's just too much crammed into a 3 month period. Am i evil for renting?

    Surely this is an Industry problem that Devs, Publishers and Retailers need to sit down and sort out, but I get the impression that nobody actually dicusses it or does anythingproductive about it; just moans every once in a while on the internet while the Publishers and Retailers laugh like panto vilains and roll in pits of cash
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 16:07

  • lambtron #71 3 years ago

    "But remember that you can't digitally distribute the console and peripherals in the first place. And no retailer is going to sell the console if they know that's the last time they will see the customer. The publisher / trade relationship would break down. "

    Yeah that must be why no one sells MP3 players.

    oh wait.

  • NewbieZilla #72 3 years ago

    Next time he talks, I hope its related to The Outsider.

  • chrisjm #73 3 years ago

    stop comparing it to piracy and go after the pirates, the amout of people playing GOW2 before i can with my full price pre order which i will not sell is plain just not fair. just stop trying to pick on the people who do support you as they are easier targets by forcing locks and keys and install limits which are stripped out when ripped online.

    is there anyone who only buys 2nd hand games? at hmv prices i seriously doubt there is, especially with the good deals online on new games, do many people still only buy on the high street and for £3 less? whereas a pirate never puts money into the industry.

    priorities!

  • Cappy #74 3 years ago

    Lots of keyboard warriors about today I see, calling people names over the internet is so macho, well done.

    I've already explained how preventing secondhand sales would probably result in less new games sold. If you prevented HMV from selling secondhand you would have to take action against GAME and Gamestation too.

    Once you've waved the magic wand and stopped secondhand sales will it also magically give people the money and store credit they would have got from trading in? I wish we could try no trade ins at all for six months, just so that some particularly thick headed people could see how trade ins have been helping to prop up sales in a market where RRP is way too high.

  • jack_klugman #75 3 years ago

    And sweet baby Jesus, is someone still wanking on about the old "multiple revenue streams" excuse for games being so expensive?

    Be a little less inflamatory and a little more constructive for once, Campbell.

    I cited it as "a factor", not as an umbrella excuse. And it certainly is a factor.

  • Monsta #76 3 years ago

    It does annoy me when retailers sell preowned games for a couple of quid less than the full price game.

    Especially when they push preowned so hard. I can understand why they do it (the profits are much higher when you buy a game for a tenner from gamer and sell it for £30.

    If there was a big difference in the price i wouldn't mind

  • PlugMonkey #77 3 years ago

    If you buy a pre-owned copy from the store you are like a pirate, but stupid since you didn't keep your money.

    That's a reasonably good point, you know. From a dev's point of view, a pirated game and a 2nd hand game are one and the same. Imagine if Game and HMV started selling pirated copies instead of genuine ones. See why that would be a major issue? The fact that there's already a bloke down your local market who sells pirated games would not make it any less of an issue if it suddenly cropped up in the main highstreet retailers.

  • zuljin #78 3 years ago

    @seasidebaz
    "If me, on my own, can make a decent engine, decent graphics, decent sound, and people will pay for my game, then a studio which employs EXPERTS will make a game more quickly and to a higher standard than me, thus making more money than me. Fact."

    Except you'll probably get paid peanuts. Not really enough to pay for a pc, support, marketing, offices... Ooh the list goes on.

    By all means, feel free to prove me wrong. Heres another way:
    [link url=http://www.kongregate.com< /a>
    ]    http://www.kongregate.com< /a>
    [/link]

    1500$ payout for game of the month. Flash is free, submission is free. And yet I don't see articles left right and centre urging developers to quit their job and go indie. Maybe because its harder than it looks to get a sustainable income from games.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #79 3 years ago

    Be a little less inflamatory and a little more constructive for once, Campbell.

    He said, immediately before incredibly rudely referring to someone by their surname only.

    I've been constructive about it for 20 years, son. Doesn't work. So now I say what the hell I like.

  • daz_john_smith #80 3 years ago

    Out of interest how many people opt for the pre-owned game when it's only £5 less?

  • Fab4 #81 3 years ago

    I don't sell my unwanted games...I give them away...suck on that Braben.

  • daz_john_smith #82 3 years ago

    @Kirly_Wombat
    "@chrisola , SNES games were £50-£80 about 15 years ago. So games have gotten cheaper if anything."

    As has already been mentioned, those prices were due to the high manufacturing costs of cartridges which no longer apply to CD's and DVD's. Prior to cartridges games used to come on tape/cassettess and they were generally around £3, with some premium titles being £5 or £10. After cartridges however the industry retained the old prcing model even though the switch was made to much cheaper CD's.

    Edit: Remembering using tapes on my ZX Spectrum makes me feel so old and I'm only 27
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 16:17

  • PlugMonkey #83 3 years ago

    @PlugMonkey, yes I agree that it affects the developers avenues for cash. But again, preowned games are clearly marked (99% of the time), and noone is forcing people to say yes, Ill save £5 and have the preowned. Infact I dont know anyone who would say yes, from a quick poll of 10 or so friends (not proof or anything, just saying :) ). In fact, the shops might be there own worst enemy then, as preowned games being at almost new prices. If they were £20 for a new title, thered be even more of an issue.

    Nobody's forcing them, but then with CDs and DVDs nobody's even offering them (except Blockbuster apparently, although my local one only has ex-rental, not 2nd hand).

    As a consumer, my main objection is the crappy reduction you get. Game will buy a game back off you for £15 and then sell it 2nd hand for £37! Back in the day, GameStation in York used to buy games for £10 and then sell them for £13, meaning they had a constant high turnover and loads of new stuff in all the time (although back in the day, they could hardly be described as a 'highstreet retailer' :D).

  • ZuluHero #84 3 years ago

    You know what else is a serious threat to the industry?

    People talking about games despite having not brought one out in the past 8 years, then saying that pre-owned is killing the market.

    Well done, David. *slow clapping*

    -------------------------

    erm...[link url=ht tp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Developments
    ]http://en .wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_De...[/link]

    2003-2008 like 11ish games?

    you DO know he doesn't make games himself anymore right? ;)

    *slow clapping*
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 16:20

  • PlugMonkey #85 3 years ago

    daz_john_smith - And sales have gone up, and development costs have gone up - but none of this or the format or anything else really matters.

    The bottom line is that 15 years ago a AAA video game cost you, John Q. Nobody, forty of your finest crispy notes. And today, 15 years later, they still cost you exactly the same forty finest crispy notes. And that is cheaper, not more expensive.

  • daz_john_smith #86 3 years ago

    Considering how expensive pre-owned games are, how can this issue even be a problem. Who is buying a 2nd hand, and no doubt scratched to hel,l copy of a game that they can have brand new for a difference of £5?

  • Floppy #87 3 years ago

    I normally agree with what Braben has to say, but not in this case.

    Once a product has been sold by the originating company, it's now in a free market. It's your baby, and it's all growdsed up and left home... it's gone, wave bye-bye. It's up to them to now use that original profit to make other products. You can't sit back on your laurels and rake in aftersales on all subsequant transactions from person to person.

    Analogy: Ford make cars. They don't get a penny from a 2nd (3rd... 4th... 5th) hand sale of that same car, they make more cars from the profit on the first sale, and any other cash from after sales services.

    If game companies want residual after sales money coming in, their distributors should produce their own official guide books and trinkets, instead of licensing all that out to Prima or whoever.

  • Rirekon #88 3 years ago

    "Mr Writer needs £15,000 a year to live. this means his 2 books a year which he is able to write must sell 100,000 copies. he only sells 75,000 but local librarys have lent out his book 25,000.

    This is different how?    "

    Mr Writer gets paid every time his book is borrowed at the Library.

  • Gaol #89 3 years ago

    Not read the comments, but he has a point if it is hard to distinguish pre-owned. It's easier in the States where New = Sealed.

  • miiiguel #90 3 years ago

    I think the dude's is thinking proprely. Give something to the ppl who really contribute for the community (hey, that's me!), like a code for something special online, a special Achievement/Trophy..., whatever. A positive discrimination.

    And please, don't do those analogies (like with cars) an used car is not the same as used 0's and 1's (they are the same as new 0's and 1's).
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 16:30

  • daz_john_smith #91 3 years ago

    @PlugMonkey
    It didn't cost me anything 15 years ago since I really couldnt afford them, it cost my, John Q Nobody, parents 40-50 crisp notes maybe 3 times a year since that's all they could afford.

    The consumesr are not the enemy here. The retailers add a tasty markup to new products and rape everybody they can on pre-owned; and on top of that the Publisher then takes a fairly large sum of what profits are left over leaving Devs with very little. However rather than discussing it like adults and coming up with a reasonable solution that benefits everybody it seems like the the best the Industry can come up with is to hit the consumer in the wallet yet again.
    Edited by 2 at 30/10/08 @ 16:34

  • chrisjm #92 3 years ago

    used 1's and 0's are the same but usually someone sandpapers them making them a used 1 and 'umm... read error!'

  • kangarootoo #93 3 years ago

    My take on things.

    First off, he desrcibed a situation where he asked for a new game and was sold a pre-owned game instead. That doesn't mean the pre-owned market has anything wrong with it. That just means a particular store has some stupid staff, who are dancing a line of legality.

    Second, I am a dev and I want to eat and pay bills and stuff. But I kind of think this whole second-hand-market thing is bigger than us. Since the very concept of posessions bought and sold came into being, people have been selling things on. The very idea that its ok for me to sell object A to you, but that for you so sell the same object on is bad, is ludicrously modern. It almost seems morally bankrupt to suggest that someone cannot sell on something they have paid for.

    Third, the whole right-to-use discussion hoves into view. When you buy a game you own the phyical disc but you do not own the game itself. You own a right to use the game, and technically that right-to-use is not resaleable. But I refer to point 2, that frankly it all sounds nice on paper but in the face of common sense it just sounds silly.

    Fourth, Rev. Stuart Campbell, I'm pretty sure there are more millionaires in the movie business than there are in the games business. Do you really think that if selling games for £10 would make more money for developers that they wouldn't already be doing it? This is one of those classic moments where some internet poster decides that they are actually smarter than EVERYBODY in the games business, and everything would be great if only everybody would listen to their wisdom. Except normally the poster is about 14 and has never been near the development process. In your case, you are old enough to know better. How many games companies have you actually ever run? How many titles have you even released since the days of the Amiga 500+?

    "I've been constructive about it for 20 years,son. Doesn't work. So now I say what the hell I like."

    You take weak offense at someone referring to you by your first name (should they have called you Rev?), but then feebly patronise someone else by calling them "son". Get over yourself dude. You genuinely consider someone referring to you by your second name as "incredibly rude"? I just can't imagine what you must think during the no doubt frequent moments when someone calls you a c*nt ;)

    Maybe if, whilst being contructive for 20 years, you had also said something sensible enough that people wanted to listen, you might have had more success. Being constructive works perfectly for the majority of people, maybe you broke it for yourself or got confused between "constructive" and "the same rude self-dellusionist I have always been"?



    Final point. Braben has been around a while, and used to have quite a bit of success. He has now been seemingly tucked away in his lab for a decade or more, and has emerged from the light to find that the world has changed. He can't make the same money he used to make from PC development. The pounds are no longer watching themselves so he is feeling twitchy about watching the pennies.

    The issue is simply more complex than he suggests. It is NOT realiable to suggest that every pre-owned sale if a lost sale. If I buy a game new, I do on the basis that I can eventually trade it in and recoup some of my expenditure. I may even trade it in against another new purchase. Anecdotally, when I first purchased the pricey Guitar Hero 1 package brand new, I did so by trading in another titles I had previously purchased brand new. No trade may have meant no sale for either title. Even if I just buy a bunch of pre-owned titles, I am benefitting from the spoils left behind by another punter who has at some point perhaps purchased those new games on that basis that they can be sold on later.

    It is all swings and roundabouts, and to my mind devs need to find a way of fitting into the model. Whining is all very good, but someone else is finding a way to keep making money whilst Braben blows hot air.
    Edited by 2 at 30/10/08 @ 16:44

  • krudd #94 3 years ago

    It really is an industry eating itself!

    ... There are far too many variables to figure out a solution that would make everyone happy.

    {
    //some solution
    }
    == Dev: happy
    == Retailer: happy
    == Gamer: happy

  • butler` #95 3 years ago

    I saw Assassin's Creed (PS3) for £13 brand new today. I still didn't buy it.

  • Floppy #96 3 years ago

    @miiiguel

    Analogies like that are perfectly valid. You might say they're 0s and 1s... but they're 0s and 1s on physical media, wrapped up in a pretty box and sold to your grubby mitts with money. It's a product, it was sold... thereafter it's out in a free market along with anything else physical that's ever been sold to the public.

    Legalities dictate that you can't distribute those 0s and 1s off that disk, or even reverse engineer it... but a physical product is a physical product. Whether it's a game, a car, a pair of shoes, whever. Once sold, the 'creator' gets no further sales from it.

    Games companies are like any other company. You either back it up with more products, produce supplimental products to accompany the original product... or you fold. It's as simple as that.

  • PearOfAnguish #97 3 years ago

    "Mr Writer gets paid every time his book is borrowed at the Library."

    It's an absolute pittance, though. Friend of mine got a cheque awarding him 96p for people borrowing his book.

    "First off, he desrcibed a situation where he asked for a new game and was sold a pre-owned game instead."

    We have no way of knowing if that's true. For all we know he just missed the pre-owned sticker or is embellishing the story. Game and Gamestation clearly label their pre-owned stock as such.
    Edited by 2 at 30/10/08 @ 16:45

  • RESIDENT_nEVILe #98 3 years ago

    chrisjm and floppy talk sense from the consumers POV..

    As consumers that do care about and bolster the industry, to think of us as pirates is absurd. The second-hand games in shops like Game Station have been bought new by someone, somewhere, so the industry gets paid. It's not ideal for some of you devs ,but it's not piracy. If you sell a non licensed product on moveable media - expect it to move.

    Obviously us consumers will bounce around within the walls that the industry and retailers have built. If it's possible that we can recoup a little money, then we will do so.

    And at the high price that Game Station et al re-sell new releases, for sake of saving a fiver the customer may aswell buy a nice sealed, unscathed copy, which I always end up doing. But hell yeah, the used games should be CLEARLY marked.

    Maybe the industry could do more to educate the game buying public to the situation. Have a flyer in the box saying "Support the devs by buying new", or "Everytime a pre-owned game is sold, a kitten dies".

    Maybe it's time for more of a push toward digital distribution.

  • cultofweaver #99 3 years ago

    He's completely wrong about the film industry having 'not for resale' rental versions of DVDs. Walk into any Blockbuster in the country and the very first rack you will see is the Ex-Rental section where you can purchase the excess copies of a film for a low price. My DVD collection is bolstered by this practice on a regular basis.

    The simplest way around this is the one repeated throughout this comment thread. Lower prices on new games mean the shops have less leeway to sell second hand copies. A new game at £20 - 25 would only be able to bring in £15 second hand, still a nice profit margin but not as attractive to the consumer who could buy the new version for a fiver more. I'm sure I am not alone in believing that if games were £25 new then I would buy a lot more of them straight away instead of only buying the big releases I am hyped for new and waiting for the second hand price to drop for the marginal titles.

  • kangarootoo #100 3 years ago

    @miiiguel

    On the subject of new 0s and 1s. I agree that game code does not depreciate in effectiveness in the way a car might, and certainly doesn't need additional money putting into it the older and more rickety it gets. But games do depreciate in desirability the same way any older product does. An old TV may work perfectly and still be capable of functioning for another 20 years, but it is less valuable when compared to its modern peers simply because its features are less modern.

    I know that doesn't relate directly to resale, but it sort of seemed relevant to mention... at least it did when I started writing :)

  • miiiguel #101 3 years ago

    "Games companies are like any other company."
    So, what's your take on the "special" video industry? You don't see retailers selling used DVD's or BR's, do you?

  • hahayou #102 3 years ago

    There's no way I'd have bought any of my first 3 consoles/handhelds without easily available and cheap second hand games.

    Cheaper games means more gamers. And when those gamers get a little more walking-around money paying an extra 10 quid for a guaranteed un-scratched disc becomes worth it.

  • kangarootoo #103 3 years ago

    @PearOfAnguish

    Well that is kind of my point. He is obviously pissed off about the pre-owned market, and in his anger is trying to force a strawman into the discussion, as if to suggest that the pre-owned market is creating by association a nation of retail con-men.

    The two things, even if true, are not connected.

  • PearOfAnguish #104 3 years ago

    "You don't see retailers selling used DVD's or BR's, do you?"

    Because there's less of a margin. You can pick up a brand new film for a tenner or less now, hardly worth selling second-hand.

    And Gamestation used to flog used DVDs, don't know if they do anymore.

  • Zomoniac #105 3 years ago

    So, what's your take on the "special" video industry? You don't see retailers selling used DVD's or BR's, do you?

    Blockbuster do, Gamestation do, Play and Amazon do, eBay does, I know at least 5 indie places within 2 miles of me that do.

  • miiiguel #106 3 years ago

    Anyway, let me clearly state that, while I do not endorse the used-videogame market - I do my games new, and I never sell them - I don't consider it similar (not even close) to the shamefull piracy shit.

  • miiiguel #107 3 years ago

    Blockbuster do, Gamestation do, Play and Amazon do, eBay does, I know at least 5 indie places within 2 miles of me that do.
    That's new to me. Didn't know.

    Where I live Blockbuster doesn't do it..., neither any other big retailer (big as in, as big as a big can be in Lisbon).
    Edited by 2 at 30/10/08 @ 16:59

  • kangarootoo #108 3 years ago

    @lavalant

    /sigh
    Well done, a bold contribution, top marks. You keenly spotted that quality games are in fact a moral right, not unlike clean water, education and a life free of persecution. And here were the rest of us thinking that games were in fact optional luxury items much like gold plated rings, DVDs and prostitutes. Well, don't we all look stupid now.


    Here is a question.

    If the evil games business got its comeuppance for apparently forcing you at gun point to buy its sub-standard wares, and lost all profits for the next ten years... on what platform would you play your righteous homebrew software? Last time I checked, silicon chip factories didn't accept passion as a currency of payment.

  • groovychainsaw #109 3 years ago

    reducing the price would be the obvious way to go, definitely - reduce/eliminate the driver for a second hand market, increase 1st days sales, extend the tail on games (as the price wouldn't drop so steeply over 1-2 months). Would take some balls to do.

    Someone like EA would have to decide to release the next fifa at £15-20 to get any sort of proof that it would work. It would be an amazing experiment. would they double their early sales? Would it expand the games market? Would they get more revenue from more new copies (rather than preowned) being bought?

    I would love to see this tried - I genuinely think it could work, but it would be a gamble. Doing it with a major franchise would reduce the risk (as you'll get big sales regardless).

  • Cylinder #110 3 years ago

    I can't believe that some people are supporting second hand games. Surely if you enjoy games you want to support your hobby and the developers of the games you love?

    When new releases are never more than £25 online, price just isn't an excuse.

  • jack_klugman #111 3 years ago

    He said, immediately before incredibly rudely referring to someone by their surname only.

    I think you set the tone by referring to my initial comment as "drivel".

    I've been constructive about it for 20 years, son. Doesn't work. So now I say what the hell I like.

    Good for you, old timer.

  • kangarootoo #112 3 years ago

    @groovychainsaw

    Any move to reduce prices has to be backed up by sound market information. Every business is trying to hit the perfect price point for their product. Too expensive and insufficient numbers will sell, too cheap and profits will not be maximised even if the market is saturated.

    My point is that whilst that balance point is pretty tough to locate (and doesn't even stay static for very long), the concept that it should be located is business school 101 material.

    EVERY business on the planet is striving to find that balance point every day. Which is why I made the point earlier that if the solution was as simple as "cut the price and you will sell more copies, bish bash bosh, you're welcome" the games industry would already be doing exactly that.

    Selling lots of copies is not the only consideration. 1000 games sold for £5 each generate the same revenue as 50 games sold for £100 each. Except if each games costs 1p to press, the 1000 copies model is LESS appealing as it has cost you £10 instead of 50p.

  • daz_john_smith #113 3 years ago

    @Cylinder
    "When new releases are never more than £25 online, price just isn't an excuse."

    I'm sure everybody would love to know where you get those prices consistently on new games. If I could buy new games for that price I would buy many more than I currently do, in fact when the Wii first launhced Virginmegastores.co.uk used to sell alot of their Wii games at that price and I don't think I've ever bought as many games in a single year.

  • phycus #114 3 years ago

    Online distribution is the only way to avoid the resale option - though that is still some years off.

    In the meantime it should be up to the game publishers and developers to re-work the re-sale license so that individuals are not penalised (ie. I can sell the game i bought via ebay etc) whereas licensed retailers are required to provide x amount is percentage from sale.

    Doesn't take a genius to work that one out.

  • Derblington #115 3 years ago

    At no point in the article does he blame consumers or talk about punishing them. How many of you actually read it before posting?

    There will always be ways to sell on your old stuff, like eBay or even face to face, and there will always be small independants that do it - the problem is the ease and focus that the major retail chains are doing it.

  • miiiguel #116 3 years ago

    I hope we don't go "all-digital", because I like the act of ordering/buying a game, finding a proper time-window for that special moment of the first play of a new game...
    A whole freakin protocol.

  • jack_klugman #117 3 years ago

    @kangarootoo:

    That's a rather impressive set of measured and well thought out posts you've made there, sir. You don't have a blog do you?

  • paulf #118 3 years ago

    part of the problem is the mark up on the preowned game, on average game will give you around 12-15 quid for a second hand game then sell it on at around 30-35 (at least in oxford street london) so they are making around 20 quid profit each time they do this whereas the people who make the game dont get anything.

    In a just world those who created entertainment whether it be games, music books or whatever would be the ones who got the largest slice of the pie not those who distributed it

  • groovychainsaw #119 3 years ago

    I understand that kangaroo, but if its the pre-owned market you want to damage/remove* then the gains from lowering your prices should (on the face of it, admittedly) outweight any losses from manufacturing. I'm not going to go as far as say you are guaranteed an increase in sales (although that seems logical), but it is certainly an alternative. The reason secondhand games are a major retail proposition is becuase of the high cost of purchase. Take it away and you WILL get more first hand sales. Whether or not it works as a business model, i don't know, but you can reduce the secondhand market in this way.

    *As an aside, i suspect the big publishers may have a stake in the seondhand games market, or may deal with shops so as not to damage this moneymaker - just a thought, mind
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 17:20

  • canIdoyabombsforya #120 3 years ago

    "And by selling the games second hand they are taking away sales which actually contribute to the people that make them. I'm not saying ban the practice, but I can understand where he's coming from. "

    How do you know the person buying the pre-owned game would have bought it new at full price?
    And the millions who buy new games, would they rather buy preowned ? Complete bollocks, most people have other hobbies and only so much to spend on games due to relatively high price compared to other toys. The games industry is in exactly the same state it was in before the pre-owned boom, before this they blamed piracy.
    The games industry needs to do more to sell more games, reducing the prices would be a good start.
    It works with DVDs
    eg: 300
    US DVD sles $280,841,714 and the budget for the film was only 60 million.

  • kangarootoo #121 3 years ago

    @lavalant

    "it's a choice between consumers having more freedom or publishers having more control, and I know which one I want."

    I have to say, thats a pretty measured response given the way I laid into you. Kudos to you.

    If it were only a choice between the two above then I might even agree with you (I'm a bit of a lefty truth be told). But there is surely a balance between the two to be had?

    What we really want is a games industry that financially viable for developers, so that games can continue to be made and platforms can be available on which people can play their wares (some of which will be ace, some of which will suck, and so it has always been). What we also want is a final price point (or range of price points) that customers find suit their ability to buy.

    In truth, the two are joined at the hip. If games are truly all overpriced and shit, the games industry will die. Despite the beliefs of some, devs WANT to make good games and they WANT to sell them for as little as possible. But regardless of what they want, they HAVE to make enough money to stay in business. And really, at the end of it all, so do you.

  • HolyJebus #122 3 years ago

    God, this is painful. For anyone who works in the industry its quite obvious there is a problem, we just need to come up with a sensible solution. And I don't think the main stores should be allowed sell second hand games. We need specialised stores that are somehow policed by the industry. Or something.

  • Cylinder #123 3 years ago

    @daz_john_smith
    "I'm sure everybody would love to know where you get those prices consistently on new games."

    I use gamestracker.com. A few examples of new releases: Far Cry 2 £20, Fallout 3 £23.50, Left 4 Dead £23.

  • Collymilad #124 3 years ago

    WHAT. A. DICK.

  • marc_canaranya #125 3 years ago

    One of the problems with game selling is that they are priced completely out of the "casual gift" market. Yes, some people buy them as gifts but at ~70€ that's only for someone really close. DVDs and CDs have huge "gift sales".

    I completely agree with the proposed solution: Sell original games for 20-30€, then make a rental version without extras and later on a download version. And then a collector's edition. And then... In a way, copy all good ideas from the movie industry.

  • Bartacus #126 3 years ago

    Games for all formats should be £15.00 each no more, then there would be no profit for the resellers of pre owned titles. more people would buy consoles = more users= more sales & less piracy.

    We would also not need to trade them in for a pittance just to afford the next £40.00 game but keep & treasure them like the gold they are.

    The release schedule were in is crazy too, I can barely afford 2 good games which tends to make me consider the cheaper piracy route.

    Whoever sets these prices is out of touch. Maybe the impending depression will make them reconsider, other wise its all going to collapse.
    Edited by 2 at 30/10/08 @ 17:34

  • Rirekon #127 3 years ago

    The solution, unless people from both sides start talking, will be the introduction of CDKeys on Console games. That killed the second hand PC market in no time and I don't doubt the industry will hesitate to do it again if it gets to that point.

  • kapowaz #128 3 years ago

    The issue is not that developers should expect to get a cut of every second hand sale. I'm not sure that is what David or anybody else (beyond maybe EA) is suggesting. What they're objecting to is the way that retailers market second hand games more than brand new, at a close to brand new price. The net result of this is that there are fewer original copies of the game sold, since they can recycle the second-hand copies through the system as if they were new stock, but at a vastly reduced cost to them, and with vastly reduced revenue for the publisher.

    Imagine you have ten copies of a game selling at £40 each, and ten customers. If they each buy a copy of the game new, then the revenue at retail is £400. For the sake of convenience let's say retailers take 20% of that, and the rest goes to the publisher. That would result in £320 revenue for the publisher, and £80 for the retailer.

    Now imagine that instead of 10 new copies, you have 2, but after they've both been sold to customers they're sold back to the retailer each time for half their original resale price, £20. Each time, the retailer then sells these used copies to new customers for the slightly less than new price of £35. Imagine this going around the 'food chain' such that eventually all 10 customers have bought the game; the first two at full retail price, the last 8 at used price. In this scenario the publisher only makes £64 revenue, but the retailer makes £136 (of which some is essentially pure profit, since they were able to circumvent distribution channels to resupply themselves).

    The result for the consumer in each of these scenarios is essentially the same (assuming they don't mind selling the game once they're done with it) but they have dramatically different outcomes for the two parties of publisher and retailer, with the latter actually giving the retailer more profit power than the publisher. Now, I'm no big fan of publishers in general, but it definitely doesn't seem fair to me that retailers could have more profit potential from selling games than the people who make them. In other industries where this sort of thing happens, we refer to it with terms like 'sweat shop' or 'slave labour'.

    Now, I'm definitely not in favour of the retail model being abandoned in favour of a rental model; that would seem to hurt consumers far more than it would prevent retailers from behaving inethically. Digital distribution which ties a copy of a game to a single user as per XBLA or Steam games is another option, but outside the PC platform it feels excessively restrictive (I'm already in the situation where I can't play some of my XBLA games unless I'm online because they were purchased on a different Xbox 360 console; given their failure rate, I'm sure I'm not alone there). What might be necessary is some form of legislation that prevents retailers from selling second-hand titles above a certain price point compared to new, or perhaps to force retailers to be required to stock an equal number of new copies to second hand. Of course I'm sure some free-market-favouring individuals would vehemently oppose this sort of legislative meddling, but hey, we've all just seen how well the free market works when left to regulate itself... ;)

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #129 3 years ago

    I think you set the tone by referring to my initial comment as "drivel".

    That was just a statement of fact. You were actually impolite.

  • BEAR-ONE #130 3 years ago

    Dont know if this has been mentionned, but Blockbusters et al are totally allowed to sell their Rental DVDs when they seem fit. What is NOT allowed is to rent a DVD that was not meant to be rented (ie. bought in the local DVD shop). Why? Because film distribution channels have a clearly higher price for DVDs going to rental places. Something like 100€ instead of 15. If the films never leave the shelves on rental, after a while the owner will probaly decide to cut his losses and sell the disc, but at a risk of having less catalog on the shelves.

  • kangarootoo #131 3 years ago

    @jack_klugman

    I had a myspace blog once, under a completely different name, but it wasn't anything to do with games. Despite my better nature it was just one of those annoying "this is whatever crap I got up to today and here is what I think about it" type blogs. It got quite addictive for a while, but unsurprisingly it never got high reader numbers.

    The thing with a blog is that its just a platform for one opinion. Even if there is a discussion thread attached, the writer of the blog is still in a unique position and can't discuss freely without sounding like he/she is lauding over everyone.

    I tend to prefer the mess of a level playing field like this, where others can contribute their opinions on equal ground and maybe we can all learn something.

    I suppose a blog might be an interesting way of generating discussion, even if I don't then myself take part. As an additional activity rather than a replacement for my ramblings here. It would still be anonymous though as that allows me to comment with relative freedom (I am not in the least bit famous I should add, but anonymity is kind of relative).


    @groovychainsaw

    "then the gains from lowering your prices should (on the face of it, admittedly) outweight any losses from manufacturing"

    It all comes down to the numbers though. If you got it wrong, you would simply lose money with no proper return.

    "The reason secondhand games are a major retail proposition is becuase of the high cost of purchase. Take it away and you WILL get more first hand sales"

    I really don't disagree, but I'm saying that more sales is not more important than more profits. You could send your sales through the roof if you dropped the price of every game to £1, but where would it get you other than into administration?

  • daz_john_smith #132 3 years ago

    @Cylinder
    "I use gamestracker.com. A few examples of new releases: Far Cry 2 £20, Fallout 3 £23.50, Left 4 Dead £23."

    I thought you were talking about console games, I would have been less surprised if I'd have know you meant PC.

  • kangarootoo #133 3 years ago

    @HolyJebus

    You can't police an open market in that way. It would be anti-competetive.

    Its like saying we are ok with company X doing normal business, unless it impacts our profits by more than we are happy with, in which case we will PREVENT company X from doing normal business.

    That doesn't sound remotely legal.

  • daz_john_smith #134 3 years ago

    @kapowaz

    +1

    I get the impression that after their initial launch batch of games they don't restock with as many brand new copies as they would have in the past. I went into Bloackbuster several times to see how much CoD4 was and each time I was told they were out of stock of brand new and only had pre-owned available.

  • kangarootoo #135 3 years ago

    Another point, and then I'll f*ck off, as I'm sure the sound of my sermosing is starting to grate.

    People keep referring to DVD sales as a comparison. Not sure why, as its a bad comparison. I shall blame RevStu (who I think probably has me on ignore; unsurprising, we've only ever had one disagreement on here and it didn't go well for him).

    Anwyay, it comes down to economies of scale. As I was waffling on about earlier, if you sell more copies you can charge less per copy, but not too much less; you need to find the right balance.

    A key concern is finding the balance point is knowing how big your actual customer base is. And the customer base for DVD sales is huge. Like proper Godzilla huge. If DVD purchase and rental is the town of coventry, game sales and rental would be my sock draw.

    ALSO, rental forms a much larger proportion of DVD related profits, so sales don't have to make ALL the money. Game rental is still pretty small potatoes compared to game sales, because rental is generally not cost effective for the consumer.

    IF games had the same sized customer base as DVDs have, we would see lower prices for games. I am sure of it. Maybe not as low as for DVDs, but there is rental to account for as I mentioned.


    Right. I'm off to try the Mirrors Edge demo on PSN. Sorry for the character assassination RevStu. A little humility can go an awfully long way you know, but I was probably harsher than I can justify.

    Edit: Actually, I just read this;
    "That was just a statement of fact. You were actually impolite."

    So damn superior. So I take it back. Your ego far outstrips your ability RevStu, in every area that I can see (save perhaps accurately quoting Red Dwarf episodes).
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 18:03

  • FortysixterUK #136 3 years ago

    Braben a tad of a knob shocker ?

  • bad09 #137 3 years ago

    Christ, another one moaning about 2nd hand while to blind with pound signs to see why people actually choose 2nd hand in the first place. There seems to be more and more of these twats popping up having a go.

    Listen games industry let's get one thing straight, don't push your luck. I can't afford to buy everything at retail prices so if you try to cut off 2nd hand I'll never experience a lot of your games anyway, and I'll hate you!

    The moment someone actually tries to step on my freedom to sell on MY goods is the moment I decide to torrent my games and never give you a penny again.

    You have been warned.......


    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 18:12

  • Bartacus #138 3 years ago

    I would if I were the games industry, drop the price by half overnight & bankrupt the greedy pre owned operators.

    Then mount a massive advertising push & promise games buyers that pricing will remain competitive in the future, killing the piracy & pre owned problem in 1 go.

    It would be consumers heaven & the sales figures would be amazing.
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 18:16

  • Grunk #139 3 years ago

    So perhaps you need to make games people want to keep?

    Or reduce the price of the games so people are happy to pay for a shiny new one.

  • mrpsb #140 3 years ago

    Elite 4 or GTFO

  • BillyBrush #141 3 years ago

    I've noticed when you buy a game, you don't own it

    you've just bought a liscence to play that game, it's in the small print....so presumably they could sue the balls off shops for selling 2nd hand

    but back in the real world, if you buy something, it should be your right to sell it should you no longer want it and someone is willing to pay for it...it's called trading

    Perhaps Braben and co can work out a way that we still pay for discs and they get in on the action of us selling something we've bought...it wouldn't be right though...i accept that they don't get the coin in on second hand sales and shops do...but the shops have a relationship with us as a seller

    So...the only way to get in on that action is offer trade yourself...if Braben is willing to buy back copies of The Outsider and sell them on 2nd hand then he can facilitate that trade and make on it...but he'd probably end up with a fucking big pile of unwanted copies of the outsider...let gamestation do it

  • Stoatboy #142 3 years ago

    I don't buy the "make cheaper games" argument. The market says it likes £40 games. It bought 8 million plus copies of GTA 4, and similarly huge numbers of Assassin's Creed, CoD4, Gears of War and so on. These are expensive games to make - they're the ones people buy in vast numbers. Clear signal to the games industry - this is what we want. Earth Defense Force is a cheaper game - I haven't got sales figures for EDF, but I'm guessing it's a small fraction of 8 million.

    The truth is most people might want to pay less for games, but they don't want games that cost less to develop.

    Which is why we're in this situation.


    And if you're after games that cost a tenner or fifteen quid, please bear in mind that currently from a £40 game the developer would be very lucky to see anywhere approaching a tenner from a copy sold. That ten pounds can be considered a ballpark figure for what it cost to actually make the game.

    The other £30 is publisher (including QA, localisation, manufacture, big chunk of cash for licensing to Sony/MS/Nintendo and advertising), distributor, retail and taxman.

    That £10 to make the game is almost all manpower costs, so cut that and your game changes accordingly. Cut it in half, you halve the manpower, so generally a much shorter game, much less polish, much less variety and so forth - all things consumers generally aren't too fond of. Now you have to add on all the other costs again (some of which will vary inline with the developer's budget - tax, advertising etc., but some won't - distribution, manufacture, big old chunk of cash to Sony/MS/Nintendo). I'd be surprised if halving the development cost would actually halve the final price for the product, but let's assume it does.

    Net result is probably a slightly-shoddy looking game that hits market for £20 with very little spend on advertising, and doesn't sell very well because people haven't heard of it, and so assume it must be cheap for a reason.

  • Discalceaterabbit #143 3 years ago

    Bit ironic, David Braben, who has spent a lot of the last 20 years trying to erase the name "Ian Bell" from peoples collective conciousness now complaining about not being treated fairly.

  • Ryze #144 3 years ago

    It's true, as much as it hurts. Preowned is hurting the industry, due to how huge it has become.

  • makeamazing #145 3 years ago

    I can see why people might give Braben grief for his comments, but you have to see his point of view too...

    Do people want the big games that most of us rave about wanting ...or do you just want casual simple stuff like yet another version of tetris? Thats the question you have to ask yourself, because an average normal game from a studio costs about £5-8 million. So of course they have to maximize their profits.. its not about making a game that people like (such a rediculous comment..).....

    The point is that shops are promoting pre-owned more than they are the new games they are selling. This is a MAJOR problem, because as other posters have mentioned (but seemingly ignored), is that the shops are selling fewer proper copies in the long run. Game and the like have massive advertising for pre-owned.

    I think overall "We" the players will be the eventual losers.. so i guess when we are all playing Peggle Extreme 2015 and not the lastest greatest game that cost a bucket load and looks fantastic then we wont complain....yeah right.
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 19:04

  • The_Game_Guy #146 3 years ago

    Meh, once all games are download only with DRM they can charge what they want and pre-owned won't exist.
    That is, of course, for the 2 weeks until someone hax it all, LOL.

  • Stoatboy #147 3 years ago

    Oh, and here are two proposals for solutions to this - one naively hopeful, one a little more extreme:

    First, game retailers voluntarily agree not to sell second hand for one month from game launch. Give the game a chance to sell and let people vote with their wallets so the industry gets a month of accurate sales figures that aren't distorted by untracked second-hand sales. Still allow customers to trade-in - they've bought the game they've got a right to sell it - just don't put the thing back on the shelves for a month. Net result - more new sales and accurate charts are good for the industry, retailers lose their fat margin on second hand but sell more new than they would have, customers maybe lose out a little on trade-in value since retailers are less keen to do it, but probably gain on second-hand prices because after a month you generally can't sell second hand at £3 off.

    Second (just an idea, and not fully thought through) the games industry gets aggressive. The market's not ready for full online-distribution, so let's try something that doesn't need vast downloads. New games come with, say, half the content that's on the disc locked, and a "free" unlock code that needs registering online. Online stores sell additional unlock codes for half the price of the game. Result - trade-in prices fall by at least the cost of the unlock code, consumers lose out if they trade-in because they can only trade-in half a game essentially, retail lose a lot of their nice second-hand trade, but the games industry gains by selling more new copies (and in a nice twist would actually like to see second-hand trade because those unlock codes would be pure profit). Games industry laughs maniacally (probably).

  • thirdeye #148 3 years ago

    Yet again the conquest of greed against the consumer continues.
    Seems obvious that he only cares for himself. What a selfish fool.

  • Chufty #149 3 years ago

    Games today have a much shorter shelf life than they used to. 10 years ago noone would pay £25+ for 8 hours of gaming entertainment. Games are much shorter now, and the entertainment they provide is more shallow and uninvolving, and yet they cost MORE than they used to. This has left games representing less and less value for money with time, and is contributing to the popularity of the pre-owned market.

  • m0thr4 #150 3 years ago

    And games are not ludicrously expensive. Did you have a look at the MegaDrive twenty year retrospective article? Do you remember how much MegaDrive games cost? £39.99, unless I'm very much mistaken. Go and put 40 quid into an inflation calculator and stick 20 years of inflation on it and see what comes out. Games are bigger, cheaper and better value than ever.

    That's actually a fairly useless exercise. Of course you can say that £40 today was the equivalent of £75 back in 1988 but, by 1992, that same price was worth only £58. Prices of commodities in a capitalist economy are nearly always pitched at whatever the market will stand. I was buying Megadrive games back then and don't remember it being an especially expensive hobby. Of course, there were far fewer things competing for our money in 1988 so, again, that £39.99 didn't seem so unreasonable. Internet connections, cable/satellite TV and mobile phones were only really for the super-rich; taxes were a lot lower, fuel was cheap and utility bills were a fraction of what they are today.

    Also, I'm not sure how the cost of making games today compares to the Megadrive era. You hear ridiculous figures being thrown about for today's, but how much of that is actually spent on creating the game and how much simply lines the pockets of the blood-sucking executives? Back in the cartridge era, the actual manufacturing process was certainly far more expensive than the optical media we use today. Sega or Nintendo had to be paid a hefty fee, or you could go the Codemasters route and make your own cartridges and fight Sega in the courts afterwards. Games back then actually had to go through a proper quality assessment (there was no way to patch them post retail) which must have been expensive and time-consuming. The game code itself was almost exclusively written in assembly language and game developers were paid far higher salaries in relative terms.

    EDIT: Plus what Chufty said above; although there were plenty of games with tiny lifespans back then; Sonic 2 and Cosmic Spacehead spring instantly to mind as utter rip-offs. Both could be completed in under an hour.
    Edited by 2 at 30/10/08 @ 20:02

  • Omega[FR] #151 3 years ago

    Ok my tuppence...
    First completely agree with the guy who said "who the hell sells a game they bought 40 quids two weeks before for 11£ in GAME"? This is crazy...
    Second, Braben is utterly wrong when he says a game will be sold 2nd hand 8-12 times, same crap as when Crytek claim that that their games was pirated 3 gazillion times.
    Third, why do downloads cost the same price as new games when they have no resale value, there is no physical object, manual etc, no retailer margin added on the price of the game etc? Answer, greed. I buy a lot of 2nd hand games (not when they are 5£ cheaper than a new copy but months after they're out) but would definitely buy more new games if they were 20£ and a lot of ppl are like me I'm sure.

  • darrenb #152 3 years ago

    @ Rirekon

    "The solution, unless people from both sides start talking, will be the introduction of CDKeys on Console games. That killed the second hand PC market in no time and I don't doubt the industry will hesitate to do it again if it gets to that point. "

    A good plan would be to have a scratch off panel inside the box off all "new" titles (similar to nintendo points cards) which was actually stuck to the inside of the package. when running the game for the first time the game asks you to insert CD-key. If this key has already been registered then a version of the game will run with no online play options, DLC content will not run.. Similar in principle to rental copies of films with no DVD extras. If you are given a new copy of the game and the panel has been scratched off then dont accept it from the shop!!

    So basically if u want a full version of the title.. Pay full price!!!

  • Bartacus #153 3 years ago

    I like that idea darrenb, but at the same time reduce the price to £25.00.

  • TheNinkyNonk #154 3 years ago

    I do get some of his sentiments.

    And I don't think it's helpful to compare the games industry to the music, film or car industry as some are. I think given the vast amount of money it takes to design and market a game and the vast number of times a second hand game passes hands, it's fair for the industry to feel a little cheated.

    A car is only re-sold a small number of times and a car model lasts a manufacturer a good five years. How long does a new game go before its sales peak? An album can be recorded for a relatively small sum of money and sold track by track online for a few pence. Wholey different dynamics. A film generates revenue at the cinema long before it hits the shelves. Arcades are all but dead and limited to showcasing a limited number of genres.

    No, the gaming indusrty is unique in it's dynamics. Comparisons to other industries are a useless argument against his points.

    The fact that the games industry is THRIVING despite the 'evil 2nd hand market' (and piracy) is a much better one.

  • smelly #155 3 years ago

    *Sigh*

    he's not bemoaning you selling a game to me.

    he's talking about the practice of shops making huge amounts of wonga by reselling games for small amounts cheaper than the full price - and screwing not just the industry - but gamers too!

  • trevd72 #156 3 years ago

    SHUT UP BITTTTTTCHING.

    As if the industry does not do one over on us by releasing shit, either in the way of bugs or content. Braben released some really buggy stuff a while ago. Thats the bigger crime. Releasing stuff that they know is shit. Don't blame the player blame the game, literally. If the game was good enough people would not trade it in so often or so quick. Why do so many people think they have the right to tell us what to do with the items we own. I know technically we are agreeing to hold the copyright but that shit does not sit right with me. I will do with my money and my possessions what I want to.
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 20:39

  • bad09 #157 3 years ago

    "I like that idea darrenb, but at the same time reduce the price to £25.00."

    I hate the idea of CD keys for consoles (I always CD crack my PC games), but a simple price reduction to £20-25 would see more of my cash flow though new games (therefore eventually more cash flowing to the industry) and not constantly scanning 2nd hand shelves for bargains.

    The industry need to realise that while people will pay £40 for their favourite game series or games they really want it's at the expense of all those other games people are slightly interested in, those games are not worth 40 notes and the problem is which games those are differs from gamer to gamer
    Edited by 1 at 30/10/08 @ 20:37

  • Tehren #158 3 years ago

    HMV have seen their profits devastated by the rise of digital music distribution. To survive, they need to adapt. Moving into the no dount lucrative pre-owned market makes sense.

    Pre-owned? Fuck it - I mean used. We ain't talking about BMWs here.

    I'm not in the industry and I don't have the figures but I'm sure retailers make just as much money on used software as they do on new. The likes of Game end up selling the exact same product multiple times - ker-ching indeed.

    Give it five years and digital distribution will be dissolving Game's profits like I-tunes and Limewire's done to HMVs. They call this creative destruction. Out with the old, in with the new.

  • darrenb #159 3 years ago

    ok, lets all pay £25 for new titles.. but I hope you will be happy paying significantly more for your console in the first place!!

    It is well known that Sony and Microsoft and ever other manufacturers (except Nintendo) have sold their consoles at a loss knowing that game sales will allow them to hit the break even point before the profit comes in. Pre-owned titles prevent manufacturers recoup their initial development costs. If you buy a PS3 and then NEVER buy a new game sony have effectivly lost money one you, even though you think you have just given then £300!

    The nintendo games model could probably allow them to sell their games more cheaply but then again a lot of wii titles are already cheaper than PS3/X360 equivalents. PC games are cheaper for this very reason, none of the game sales go back to the hardware manufactures. That is why a decent spec PC will cost you more than any current gen console.

  • bad09 #160 3 years ago

    @ darrenb

    To be brutally honest I would be happy to take a hit on the chin (within reason) at console purchase if games were that cheap.

    At £425 PS3 was a Joke but if games were £25 quid that pill would of been easy to swallow

  • bad09 #161 3 years ago

    Wow, while I'm not sure about Goatboy's strange chav obsession, he has a point. People impulse buy at £40 and the industry gets lucky and recoups a SMALL amount of the marketing budget back, but if that person can't offset that purchase by getting rid when done or bored (and saving some dough on the next impulse buy) that person will think VERY carefully about each purchase and then sales go down further because people buy less.

  • seasidebaz #162 3 years ago

    I once went near Hull. You can smell the chavs from Humber Bridge ;)

  • clockworkzombie #163 3 years ago

    The moment all games become download only is the time I cut spending on games significantly. .I trade in games I do not want anymore to help pay for the acquisition of new games. The second hand market gives more money to the seller and a cheaper price for the buyer.

    Most of the games I purchase are new the second hand copies tend to be older releases that I want to take a punt on. I just purchased Overlord for a quarter of new price and it was in mint condition. Turning point: Fall of liberty is a good example. I know the game is not great from playing the demo but it still interests me and I want to play it. I will not pay full price as the game is flawed.

    This time of year when ALL the triple A titles come out is murder on our wallets and I understand people wanting to save money.

    Market forces dictate pricing I will pay full price for a game like CoD 4 and not for turning point. As regards to downloadable content developers can make money selling this content to EACH user that purchases a second hand game as DLC does not leave the system it was purchased on.

  • HolyJebus #164 3 years ago

    @Kangarootoo

    Fair enough. You make a lot of valid points and I haven't really thought of a full solution to the problem. But I do think there is a problem. I don't think proper game shops should be selling second hand games as they will obviously push those sales ahead of new releases.

    When I said I think a shop should be policed I mean havin licensed stores. That may seem crazy but that's just cause they don't currently exist. If they were all around they might be the norm. Sorry, I'm just blabbling now. I think there is a solution, I just don't know what it is :)

  • Bonus #165 3 years ago

    As a developer myself it's a confusing situation.

    How many people by brand new games? Quite a lot because every pre-owned game was new at some point.

    There was also an interview with someone from gamestop in the states who said that his chain was actually providing a different currency for people to buy games through their retail chain. He claimed that the sales of games would actually drop when people couldn't use old games as a currency against new games.

    The only problem in these practices is uneducated consumers. Some of these big stores sell pre-owned copies at only £5 less than they are selling the new copy and people will see it as cheaper and buy it but they could have bought a new copy for the same price from a supermarket or online retailer.

    So as a developer the solution I see is two-fold. Make games cheaper to prevent used copies being a viable currency as trades for new ones and at the same time cut the profit which can be made from used copies by retail. These losses in reduced costs could hopefully be recouped by having more sales.

  • plastickitty #166 3 years ago

    Erm i seriously doubt that the shops are switching new for used at the counter, when you go to pay, to deceive them. I suspect that the customer is being offered a pre-owned copy at the counter in a means for the shop to make more profit as all the money from a pre-owned sale goes to the shop.

    Besides in some cases the prices are so close together for newly released games that some customers would rather pay the extra £5 to have a new copy rather than the pre-owned one.

  • layleeloo #167 3 years ago

    balls. People dont half talk shit on this forum.
    Edited by 1 at 31/10/08 @ 00:00

  • ongbakurhead #168 3 years ago

    Games should have a better mark up percentage for retaillers, maybe then they wouldn't have to rely so heavily on trade ins.

  • MrChuckles #169 3 years ago

    I've been in game development for 13 years, starting right back on the Amiga. Back then pirates were easily the biggest threat to a developers income. Nowadays this is still the case for PC software that doesn't have a decent distribution model (i.e. anything on Steam or an MMORPG is pretty safe). However, on consoles the threat of piracy has been greatly reduced with the onset of decent online gaming services which reward players for being online all the time, and therefore can switch off hacked consoles.

    Therefore the biggest threat to my own personal income is the 2nd hand console games market. As a developer i am not saying that i want gamers to be banned from selling their games, of course that's fine, ebay is fine, boot fairs are fine, selling it to your mate is fine. The problem occurs when multi-million pound companies decide that the best way they can get money from the games industry is by buying those games off Gamer A at a knock down price and then selling back to Gamer B for a price near retail. They then push the 2nd hand market in priority to the new market as they make more money per 2nd hand copy (e.g. £15) compared to a new title (e.g. £10).

    Obviously as a gamer Ii often go in and buy 2nd hand titles where possible, but i would prefer to have to do this in a 2nd hand shop, much like i have to do for films and music, and in fact just like i used to have to do by popping in Cex in London. The problem isn't small retailers making a few bob here and there to keep their store running, it's EVERY SINGLE SHOP that sells full price games realises they make more money by selling 2nd hand software than new stuff.

    I already know that because of this companies are already trying out new forms of games delivery to the consumer in such a way that 2nd hand versions of software will not have the same functionality as ones that have been bought new (e.g. like the way Limited Editions have unique codes that are typed in to access more content). Although it isn't a pleasant way to go, i expect the games industry to band together to face the problem of an aggressive retail over the next year or so, and the problem to be eradicated in this time. Hopefully when this happens, as full price sales increase, that software costs will actually drop to reflect increased sales, but i won't hold my breath.

    Books have a retail lifespan of centuries, films have a retail lifespan of decades, games have a lifespan of months or a year if they are lucky.

    In future, on games i work on, i would more likely push for a £15 base game with more DLC for £15 than a £30 base game with £0 worth of DLC. The gamer gets they same game for their money, but on the 2nd hand market, the game is worth less.

  • iter #170 3 years ago

    Free market. Deal with it. Pretty much every other industry has this 'problem'.

  • ruckus #171 3 years ago

    Clockworkzombie: As regards to downloadable content developers can make money selling this content to EACH user that purchases a second hand game as DLC does not leave the system it was purchased on.

    Exactly... yet some people suggest the solution is to make this impossible! Way to cut off your nose to spite your face...

  • quantumsheep #172 3 years ago

    Well, his comments have certainly provided an interesting point of debate. Some great comments, especially from Kangarootoo :)

    I have to agree with those suggesting that a title's life can be extended with DLC. Crackdown's was excellent, Vader for Soul Calibur IV was overpriced but I enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to the GTA IV DLC. Warhawk on the PS3 was also interesting in that new content was released pretty regularly for a while, and at a reasonable price.

    As others have mentioned, DLC can be bought by people who bought the game new *and* by people who got the game 'used'. So retailers still make money off used sales, and developers/publishers make extra money from people buying DLC.

    For this to really take off, there needs to be a couple of things taken into consideration:

    1. DLC pricing has to be looked at, and a 'sweet spot' found. Price it right (Crackdown) and most people won't begrudge a few quid here and there to add to and refresh their experience of a game. Price it wrong (Namco games/Halo maps/Oblivion) and you leave a bad taste in people's mouths.

    2. Create, and inform the user of, a way of transferring DLC to the next generation of your console. Essentially, reassure the consumer that the 40 games they've downloaded onto their hard drive will be playable on the next Xbox, PlayStation or Wii. This should encourage more people to download games directly with any luck, maybe invest in a bigger hard drive etc etc. I know backwards compatibility seems to be on the back burner this gen, but hey, you never know.

    Give people a reason, in essence, to hold onto their purchase for longer. Typically, games come down in price a few months after launch. Hold onto the consumer for those first few months, and the trade in value goes down on the game, the retailer's profit margin goes down , and it becomes a smaller part of the overall business.

  • Stoatboy #173 3 years ago

    @ongbakurhead: re: "Games should have a better mark up percentage for retaillers, maybe then they wouldn't have to rely so heavily on trade ins."

    HMV never used to sell games - they chose to do so because they saw that they could make money from it. Which they are. Lots of it. And ever since they started they've constantly expanded the games side of their business because of it. They're not moving into second hand sales because they're not making money on games - they're doing it because they can make MUCH MORE on second hand games for now. It's not in the customer's best interest, it's not in the best interest of the industry they rely upon - it's purely for a short term gain.

  • MGG #174 3 years ago

    No matter how long I am in games, and thats a very long time as a player and a developer, some arguments refuse to die. And Campbell still talks complete Shite.

    Saying that the multiple revenue streams argument is "drivel" shows what shit you talk sir. All the other entertainment mediums have multiple revenue streams APART FROM GAMES. Who are the only people suffering? Games people. If you remember Mr Campbell, you were once on of these games people. Even if it was for such a short time. So much easier to be destructive than constructive, is it not?

    Even books, ignoring the entire "could be turned into a film/tv show/game" still get extra money from the libraries. Yes, libraries pay extra (is it 3 times the usual price? I forget) for the right to lend the books for free. I guarentee this one action minimises the second hand book market as much as can be.

    People being naive enough to say "duh, just make better games" automatically forfeit the right to make a comment at all. Saying that publishers should just charge less for games and/or give developers a bigger cut are also forgetting the fact that publishers are also buisness and the laws of economics applies to them too - not all of them are constantly trying to exploit the developers that work for them. Remember, something like 8/10 games *LOSE* money - that means those 2/10 games that just about break even or make a profit have to make enough money to cover all the losses. Is this a perfect system? No, it is not. Can the industry improve? Of course it can. But are consumers paying almost the same price for 2nd hand as they are for brand new helping the situation? No they sodding well aren't.

    And seriously, why do you all let yourselves get ripped off by 2nd hand prices (both buying and selling) at shitholes like GAME when a couple of quid more buys you a brand new copy?

  • Tyronne #175 3 years ago

    I still see the `pre-owned is the new satan` argument as nothing but sheer greed.

    Owning a game is still a commodity no different than my books, dvds and car and If I wish to purchase a 2nd hand or third hand car, I can quite easily go to most car sale rooms and find brand new and second hand cars for sale under the same roof and yet do I hear Ford or fiat complaining that the 2nd hand car market is killing their brand new motors....no.

    Thing is , with the present economic climate, the cheaper games will sell more than the brand new ones as they are simply cheaper.Money is very tight at the moment and a good many really do have to question wither they can actually justify the cost of a full priced game.

    Still dubious over elite 4 after the buggy P.O.S I purchased in elite that gametek sold...so did I get a front page with my moaning of how fed up I was with developers getting my money for a substandard game...no, so why should I feel any sympathy for braben.

  • kangarootoo #176 3 years ago

    @lavalant

    Paraphrased "Maybe devs don't need publishers"

    STEAM says you are probably right :) Although Valve are turing into a publisher of sorts as far as small devs are concerned. Plus, a delivery system like steam prevents resale at source. That makes it a sensible and elegant solution. Selling discs and then trying to prevent their resale after the fact is NOT a sensible or elegant solution (imho anyway).

    @HolyJebus

    That sounds a bit like pohibition to my ears. I might expect an underground, car boot sale, market for second hand games would still thrive (and everyso often Chicago cops from the 50s would come along and smash all the games using night sticks).

    @layleeloo

    "balls. People dont half talk shit on this forum."

    Well at least one person does, obviously. Seriously though, is that all you contribute to the debate? If you think someone is talking knackers how about your point it out a little more contructively?

    And also what is with the edited tag? It took two attempts to get that last post of yours right?

  • keyboardmonkey #177 3 years ago

    15+ years ago Electronics boutique (and others before them no doubt) were selling Pre-Owned games.

    Fast Forward to present day.....

    Oh Oh quickly some one close the gate

    I think you may have left it a little too late to start protesting about this business practice.

    By the way, developers/publishers aren't that foolish what about Platinum games? It's exactly the same game we were selling you 6-12 months ago but now it costs £20 less (they wouldn't be doing this unless they were still making money on it!)

    As for shops defrauding the industry, it's all bullshit, before shops were doing it you just you to swap games with your friends (any many still do via the swappsies group, everyone in that group should now be ashamed as you are also helping to defraud the industry ;-) or maybe you are just being environmentally friendly and not throwing away all your old stuff.

    Edited by 1 at 31/10/08 @ 07:56

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #178 3 years ago

    Saying that the multiple revenue streams argument is "drivel" shows what shit you talk sir. All the other entertainment mediums have multiple revenue streams APART FROM GAMES.

    Sigh. This is such made-up bollocks. There is no such thing as "multiple revenue streams". There is ONE revenue stream for ANY leisure media, and that's selling it. Whether you're selling a single view of a movie at the cinema or by rental, selling unlimited views for a higher price on DVD, or selling mass views for broadcast, you're still just selling your film. Games can be sold at retail, rented for limited use, sold to compilation makers, sold to newspapers or magazines for free mass distribution, sold to a budget label or bargain bucket clearance chain for cheap re-release, but again it all amounts to the same thing.

    Remember, something like 8/10 games *LOSE* money

    And what does that tell you about the industry's business model? Nobody will buy mediocre games at £40-50, and the vast majority of games are mediocre. People will, however, buy a CD they only like half the tracks on, because £9 is an impulse buy. Very few people can spend £40-50 at a time on leisure media without stopping to think about it, which means they only make "safe" purchases, which is why 80% of games don't sell. If you cut the price, you spread the money around a lot more evenly, and you don't get the tiny handful of games sucking up all the available money, which is what you appear to be complaining about in this instance.

    None of which has the slightest bearing on whether people are free to do what they like with their own property once they've bought it, of course. If they choose to sell it to HMV or GAME for a low price, that's entirely their business. It then becomes HMV or GAME's property, and they are legitimately entitled to sell it on at whatever price they can get someone else to pay. If customers feel this is damaging the games industry, it's their equally free choice not to buy pre-owned. However, the rise and rise of pre-owned fairly clearly demonstrates the consumer's opinion on the subject, and all the special-interest whinging in the world from Braben and his ilk won't make the remotest shred of difference.

  • Druadan #179 3 years ago

    Reading this article from my till terminal at the CeX Manchester Arndale store. I'm guessing he's not too fond of us either....

  • Dan234 #180 3 years ago

    Do tills have browsers now? Whatever next...

    The problem with 9 pound games is they'll have 9 pound graphics and 9 pound sound and people expect HD 3D surround smellovision, so games at that price won't sell either. If you want 9 pound graphics and 9 pound sound you crank up XBLA, PSN, WiiWare, or Steam. And there's no pre-sold market with digital distribution. As a developer, what's not to like?

    It seems that unless huge chains like HMV and Game start to share the proceeds of their games recycled n times with 40 pound graphics and 40 pound sound leaving the developer with one game with 40 pound graphics and 40 pound sound, it's going to go all digital.

    If it carries on it's a safe bet that the next generation of consoles are all going to come with at least 500 gigs of HD, even the cardboard box it comes in will be digitally signed, and will auto-update without so much as a by-your-leave.
    Edited by 1 at 31/10/08 @ 09:20

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #181 3 years ago

    The problem with 9 pound games is they'll have 9 pound graphics and 9 pound sound

    Complete bollocks. Aren't we over the ridiculous "development cost" myth yet? New hardback books cost the same as new DVDs (or even more). Yet one contains a movie costing millions to develop (even if it was a straight-to-DVD movie that didn't make anything in cinemas), the other one cost the price of a typewriter. Music CDs made by a bloke in a bedroom with a PC and a sampler sell for the same as U2 albums recorded for millions. Next you'll be telling us that it cost the same to develop Smash Court Tennis 3 as it did to develop GTA 4, because they both sell for the same price. The retail price of almost anything that's duplicated digitally (and a lot of other things besides) reflects a policy decision, not a cost one.

  • warlockuk #182 3 years ago

    Waaaaahhh
    Waaaaahhh
    Waaaaahhh

    Sorry, yeah... So many shops do pre-owned games, it's not like HMV suddenly break the camel's back. It's been a market for decades ffs.

    WAAAAAHHHH

  • Quint2020 #183 3 years ago

    You can buy everything second hand so what? we should make some special rule to not allow it for games?

    I buy almost all of my games brand new on release day, the few that I think are not good enough to pick up straight away or I simply don't have time for I tend to buy second hand and will continue to do so.

    Maybe if games weren't so fucking expensive in the first place.... £40 for a game is a lot of money.

  • TheNinkyNonk #184 3 years ago

    I never buy used IF I can afford new. At a time like this when the release calendar is saturated by publishers wanting to cash-in on Xmas, I'm left with little choice but to flood the market with even more used titles so I can experience the new ones. And I earn 40k.

    The price DOES need to drop if they want to turn the tap off the 2nd hand market. I'd like to keep ALL the games I buy, but it just isn't an option when, this quarter alone, there's about £500 worth of games I want to buy.

    THAT OR RELEASE SOME OF THEM IN SUMMER FOR A CHANGE!!!

  • Quint2020 #185 3 years ago

    " RELEASE SOME OF THEM IN SUMMER FOR A CHANGE!!! "

    This.

  • Biggles #186 3 years ago

    Simplest solution would simply be to not supply new copies to stores that sell used ones. Even for the first couple of weeks or so. If HMV wants to become a dodgy second hand swap shop, then let them. Focus efforts on those stores that want to work with you rather than cut you out and see if they come crawling back. Heck, at the very least negotiate a cut of the procedes from second hand sales. Publishers are supplying the games in the first place, surely that's a good enough bargaining chip to get a better deal from the big shops at least?

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #187 3 years ago

    Simplest solution would simply be to not supply new copies to stores that sell used ones. Even for the first couple of weeks or so. If HMV wants to become a dodgy second hand swap shop, then let them. Focus efforts on those stores that want to work with you rather than cut you out and see if they come crawling back. Heck, at the very least negotiate a cut of the procedes from second hand sales. Publishers are supplying the games in the first place, surely that's a good enough bargaining chip to get a better deal from the big shops at least?

    No, of course it isn't. Publishers need retail more than retail needs publishers. Preowned games have a MUCH bigger profit margin than new in most cases, so it wouldn't hurt HMV a bit if they devoted their entire floorspace to preowned at the expense of new, whereas not being available in High Street chains would CRUSH publishers' profits.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #188 3 years ago

    All that really needs to be said though is that hundreds of millions of dollars can be made from theatrical distribution ALONE.


    Indeed it can. So what? It's still just selling your film to people. Very few films are shown in cinemas while also being available to buy on DVD or shown on TV. So it's not multiple revenue streams, it's one revenue stream - first cinemas, then DVD, then broadcast media. Not until the very end of the product cycle are any two of those existing simultaneously, and never all three.

  • keyboardmonkey #189 3 years ago

    So does Mr.Braben live in a brand new house ? Only buy brand new cars do you?

    It's a stupid remark made by people who just want more and more money or, are looking for something or someone to blame for the decline in their business.

    What if every manufacturer (by the way that is what they are at the end of the day, doesn't matter what title society gives you or you give yourself... Games Developer, Artist, House Builder) did this sort of thing?

    Go into buy a used car, sorry about the high price but everytime we sell it we have to pay the original manufacture more money. In the end the manufacturer could actually end up making more money from resales than the product originally sold for (if it gets sold enough times).



  • chrisjm #190 3 years ago

    heres an idea actually, why doesnt the industry collectively buy shares in game, they will then get back profits from 2nd hand sales and more from new game sales.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #191 3 years ago

    heres an idea actually, why doesnt the industry collectively buy shares in game, they will then get back profits from 2nd hand sales and more from new game sales.

    Now there's *intelligent* thinking.

  • Fodder #192 3 years ago

    My worry with this situation is that I can't see it ending well for the consumer. Rightly or wrongly, the publishers see 2nd hand sales as something they need to fight, so the further retail goes down this path, the more publishers are going to come up with methods of stopping them. We've already got EA removing features from 2nd hand copies of their sports game, unless you pay them $20 to activate them for your console, and then there's digital distribution which can't possibly be good for the consumer in the long run (I actually find it amazing that people are so happy to embrace a system that means that there will be a single retailer for games for a given platform, like the lack of competition will result in anything other than higher prices).

  • Vermillion3000 #193 3 years ago


    Braben is bang-on and I support him completely.

    The problem the most of the Braben-haters are missing (including Campbell who should back to messing with Bruce Everiss) is that second hand film and book rentals are significantly more casual and amount to significantly less shelf space that they do wtih videogames.

    When I go to Waterstones, everything I see is brand new. When I go to Game about 50% what I see is pre-owned.

    That's the difference between second and books/films and games. The games industry is now experiencing an industrialised effort to sell second hand games. This is compounded by retail staff deliberately selling the 2nd hand copy rather than the new one. (either by genuinely underhand means, or by offering the 2nd hand version when the consumer is trying to buy the new one.)
    The market is flooded with pre-owned games that are still in their release window. That is another problem that books and other media don't tend to suffer from.

    If retail would start feeding back some of the profit from 2nd hand games to the publishers then I think it would be way more tolerable. I suspect that Braben would agree that this would be an improvement.

  • Ryze #194 3 years ago

    @keyboardmonkey

    It's only that when HMV, Game & Gamestation are all doing it, plus there's eBay etc, it becomes ridiculous.

    I've even had to stop myself from buying games, due to them becoming too affordable too quickly. I'm 28 and my flat is filling up with quality digital media that I like to keep.

    It's like real world P2P and the creators are missing out while we make money back!

    This is the future, eh? Interesting.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #195 3 years ago

    The problem the most of the Braben-haters are missing (including Campbell who should back to messing with Bruce Everiss) is that second hand film and book rentals are significantly more casual and amount to significantly less shelf space that they do wtih videogames.

    Indeed. And why is that? It's because people don't widely regard films and books as grossly overpriced.

  • callum9999 #196 3 years ago

    @Vermillion3000

    The reason being, a new game is about £40 whereas a new book or DVD is generally under £15. I can guarantee you that if they suddenly started charging £40 for books and DVDs, a huge pre-owned market would appear.

  • Ryze #197 3 years ago

    @Nicky1015

    Nah, I trade also - you're really not thinking about business.

    If there is only 1 week of sales before the trade-ins take over for a 20hr single player game, then the game wont sell as much, and the industry will stop developing these games.

    If all games turn into Quake 3 Arena, then I'll stop purchasing games at retail, I'm afraid.

    It's as simple as that.

  • Biggles #198 3 years ago

    Well I don't know the exact figures, but with music sales down, shops like HMV are looking increasingly to videogames as a source of income. If I were the publisher I'd certainly start playing hardball with them. If they want to undercut your product and essentially remove your from the revenue stream then why should you even bother supplying them with new product? There are other shops out there, Zavvi, online distributers etc. who I'm sure would love to be able to claim exclusivity on new releases, even for a week or two.

    It's unlikely, but if the publishers were to band together I'm sure they could put the squeeze on quite effectively.

  • junebug7556 #199 3 years ago

    All those guys saying that once a game is purchased by the consumer its their physical property - are correct. I agree completely with Rev. Stuart Campbell. He has hit the truth nail square on the head and I salute him.
    The crypto-marxists and hand wringing game developers should wake up and smell the coffee.

    Punters can do what the hell they like with goods they purchase - anything at all. And that includes games. Doh!

    If some Johnny wants to sell his PS3 Ratchet & Clank to some shop on his High Street, then its his call, and his alone.

    I do wish game developers would realise that if they created good games - with nice user manuals and artwork, for about £20 quid people would probably keep them - but if they want to sell them for 5p later - good on them.

    Thing is, most games these days are shit, designed by some committee full of accountants and marketing execs who only want to rape the consumer, force them into paying for sub standard games, on crappy technology, using additional downloadable content as a leverage to squeeze more cash out of the anus of the gamer.

    And now they want to stop the punter from claiming some of his hard earned cash back when he finally realises that gaming is dead in this generation and he needs the cash for that God of War disk at his local GameStation.

    If the industry dies - it will die in its own puke of lies and hype...and if all it can produce these days is the utter shit parading as good games, then it deserves every kick, every punter can give it, until the corpse becomes rotten with its own poison and bile.

    I thank you.

  • patchbox360 #200 3 years ago

    try finding call of duty 4 second hand

  • SpyroViper #201 3 years ago

    O boo hoo, cry me a river. It happens for almost everything out there! You think a 2nd hand Dyson should still give Dyson royalties too? Can't have one rule for games and another one for other things.

  • Druadan #202 3 years ago

    try finding call of duty 4 second hand

    20 copies for 360 in my CeX store. Also got some PC and PS3 copies. They are out there, but only in the stores that pay well for them. Of course the catch is that you will also pay more for them at CeX, but at least you they're covered for faults as though they were brand new.
    Edited by 1 at 31/10/08 @ 12:22

  • Stoatboy #203 3 years ago

    Gah! The games industry shouldn't get proceeds from second-hand sales. It doesn't deserve them. People should be able to sell their games - it's their right as a consumer. But I sincerely believe what retail are doing is damaging the industry and that's what needs to be resolved - possibly through the industry and retail sitting down and getting some kind of voluntary agreement sorted to restrict resale shortly after a game has launched.

    But this argument's going nowhere (SpyroViper just proved that). Bottom line is that without some give on retail's part what they are doing will make the industry change the way it makes games, and it almost certainly won't benefit consumers in any way - it'll probably make things worse for you. If you're happy with retail dictating how games are made, that's great. Free market ftw! If you're not then at least consider that Braben has a point, even if he gets it across in a really objectionable manner.

  • Dan234 #204 3 years ago

    Stuart Campbell:

    Complete bollocks. Aren't we over the ridiculous "development cost" myth yet? New hardback books cost the same as new DVDs (or even more). Yet one contains a movie costing millions to develop (even if it was a straight-to-DVD movie that didn't make anything in cinemas), the other one cost the price of a typewriter. Music CDs made by a bloke in a bedroom with a PC and a sampler sell for the same as U2 albums recorded for millions. Next you'll be telling us that it cost the same to develop Smash Court Tennis 3 as it did to develop GTA 4, because they both sell for the same price. The retail price of almost anything that's duplicated digitally (and a lot of other things besides) reflects a policy decision, not a cost one.

    So you're telling me the economics of games development allow for everything to be sold for a tenner and then re-sold again (say) 5 times more in the pre-owned section by the likes HMV and Game for a fiver?

    There's a point where the scale of pre-owned becomes too much, especially when all the main outlets you buy games from also have a cheaper pre-owned copy for 70-90% of the shelf price of the original copy but doesn't give 70-90% of the developer's cut to the developer.

    I suppose games developers have got it lucky though. In some industries they never even get the first sale, they just find cheaper copies imported from China. The whingers should be thankful.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #205 3 years ago

    That's all true, but in the film model the first few steps in the chain are sales not to the public, but to other business interests allowing a lot of the production costs to be recouped quickly and safely. That's a big deal!

    By that rationale, the first steps in the chain from game publishers aren't to the public either, but to wholesalers, distributers and retail chains who buy in huge bulk and then sell on to the public, exactly like movies are sold on to businesses who then show them to the public in cinemas.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #206 3 years ago

    So you're telling me the economics of games development allow for everything to be sold for a tenner and then re-sold again (say) 5 times more in the pre-owned section by the likes HMV and Game for a fiver?

    The point is, if it cost a tenner it wouldn't be resold so many times - just like DVDs and CDs aren't resold that many times - because at that price there wouldn't be anything like the same size of resale market. That's why HMV are only doing this with games, not movies or music.

  • Dan234 #207 3 years ago

    Let's look at Blu-ray's price point then.

    I'd say the lack of pre-owned isn't due to lack of demand, it's due to the studios' lawyers willingness to rip them a new one.

    Edited: Can't type.
    Edited by 1 at 31/10/08 @ 12:44

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #208 3 years ago

    Games, even if they were priced identically to movie DVD's would never sell in the same volumes for numerous reasons.

    You simply can't reasonably make that statement. Look at the enormous new market Nintendo has opened up just by making their hardware a bit more accessible. Imagine if they accompanied that by cutting game prices in half as well.

    Carnival Funfair Games, a title derided by most publications and so-called "hardcore" gamers (though it's actually a lot of fun) has sold HALF A MILLION copies at a lower price point. How many DVDs or albums sell more than half a million, particularly ones that are mostly badly-reviewed? (5/10 on EG, 56% on Metacritic, 58% on Gamerankings.) And that's just a minigame collection in an overcrowded genre, with nothing obvious going for it except a lower price, still much higher than most DVDs or CDs.

    So just imagine how many more it might have sold if it was £10 rather than £20, before you claim that games couldn't ever sell as many as DVDs. How many DVDs have sold more copies than GTA4, anyway?

  • Vermillion3000 #209 3 years ago

    Yes - allowing players to selll games is one thing - and a fair thing.
    But the industrialised propulsion of the second hand game that directly conflicts with the brand new version is a big problem.

    This is not like selling a game to your mate or taking a bunch to the charity shop - this is frontline, point-of-sale interception of new product in favour of second hand stuff.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #210 3 years ago

    Let's look at Blu-ray's price point then.
    I'd say the lack of pre-owned isn't due to lack of demand, it's due to the studios' lawyers willingness to rip them a new one.

    Eh? What? It's rather more likely due to the fact that hardly anyone (in the greater consumer sense) owns any Blu-Ray movies yet, so there's no market.

    Besides which, BRs aren't actually much more expensive than DVDs. I just checked Amazon and the "Deluxe Edition" of Casino Royale on DVD and Blu-Ray has RRPs of £18 and £23 respectively, a mere £5 difference. (And the actual Amazon selling prices are only £2 different.) So your argument is nonsensical.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #211 3 years ago

    This is not like selling a game to your mate or taking a bunch to the charity shop - this is frontline, point-of-sale interception of new product in favour of second hand stuff.

    So? That's capitalism for you. If someone's pinching your market you fight for it by competing in the marketplace (in this case, making preowned less attractive by reducing the differential between it and new), not by running crying to Mummy that it's unfair when someone undercuts you.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #212 3 years ago

    What's most annoying from a games industry perspective is that ironically enough games get judged far more harshly in the media than music or films. A blockbuster summer-movie isn't expected to get rave reviews from every critic the way big games are expected to, and do people actually read music reviews in order to make buying choices over the latest teen sensation.

    Not sure I understand this either.

    1. Games magazine sales are falling and falling, as sales of games rise and rise. The impact of print reviews is less and less every year, and nobody gives a fuck what 98% of websites say. It's still extremely rare to see an online review score quoted on a box sticker.

    2. Mainstream media covers games incredibly little compared to other entertainment types, so again reviews are of very little influence. Who buys a game based on 30 words in FHM written by a guy who's clearly never even played it?

  • Dan234 #213 3 years ago

    Besides which, BRs aren't actually much more expensive than DVDs. I just checked Amazon and the "Deluxe Edition" of Casino Royale on DVD and Blu-Ray has RRPs of £18 and £23 respectively, a mere £5 difference. (And the actual Amazon selling prices are only £2 different.) So your argument is nonsensical.

    Check the RRP (the price point in the shops) or HMV's site. Plenty of old films/box sets with hardly any development costs going for 40-50 quid.

  • Dan234 #214 3 years ago

    So? That's capitalism for you. If someone's pinching your market you fight for it by competing in the marketplace (in this case, making preowned less attractive by reducing the differential between it and new), not by running crying to Mummy that it's unfair when someone undercuts you.

    If HMV really are competing with publishers, let's see HMV knock out a game or two. They could probably manage a Half-Life mod or a Spore level if they tried hard enough.

    They're not competing. All HMV are is an intermediary diverting the developers' cut into their pockets. If they really have no interest in letting the developer have their cut, then the developer will look for other ways. It'll be all digital and it'll knock the true second-hand market on its head, something which is a shame (I'm not being sarcastic).

    If it carries on and developers bother to sell software on discs it'll go for practically nothing then you'll complete your purchase on-line. They'll remove all value from the disc and it'll also sort out piracy. Unfortunately customers' computers/consoles will end up a DRM battleground and HMV, Game, etc... will end up with no pre-owned market and practically no first-hand market either.

  • lugoves #215 3 years ago

    As a consumer I'm in agreeance with Braben on this one. In fact, though it might not be a 'popular' idea, I've sent unsolicited suggestions reccomending the "Trophy" or "Achievement" systems could be utilized to ensure only the first 'Owner' of a Game unlocks a particular Trophy therefore Used games would not be 'completable' to 100% for 'bragging rights' without Full Retail Purchase. Might not eliminate the problem, but in the long run protection of the value of licensed materials and reduction of Piracy in any form should benefit consumer & developer alike.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #216 3 years ago

    If HMV really are competing with publishers, let's see HMV knock out a game or two. They could probably manage a Half-Life mod or a Spore level if they tried hard enough.

    Sigh. You insist on missing the point based on some totally spurious whiny "creative" argument, when in fact this is pure business. Once a publisher sells HMV a game, the transaction is over. The game is HMV's to do what it wants with, and when it sells it to somebody that privilege becomes theirs. HMV is not a developer, nor does it want to be. It's in the TOTALLY LEGAL business of selling things, and also of buying them if it chooses to.

    If publishers don't like that, they have several choices.

    1. Charge HMV much more for their games. That's clearly a non-starter, since HMV would tell them to shove their games up their arse.

    2. Refuse to supply HMV with stock at all in protest at pre-owned trade. Again, HMV will most likely shrug their shoulders and devote 100% of their floorspace to preowned instead of 25% or 50%. It has a higher profit margin and is more widely attractive to customers because of the lower price, so HMV isn't hurt at all. The publisher, on the other hand, is completely screwed, because it's lost a huge percentage of its customer presence. So that's a dumb idea too.

    3. Charge much LESS for their games, so that pre-owned will be much less tempting to the public and therefore much less lucrative to HMV. This is the only practical alternative until digital distribution is more widespread, but the industry resists it because it's controlled by greedy idiots who couldn't run a piss-up in an Irish brewery.

    Publishers are reaping the rewards of their constant attempts to cut retail out of the equation entirely with digital distribution. It's hardly surprising that retail is fighting back, since if they don't the publishers will continue moving towards digital anyway. They have nothing to lose.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #217 3 years ago

    Check the RRP (the price point in the shops) or HMV's site. Plenty of old films/box sets with hardly any development costs going for 40-50 quid.

    Do you even know what point you're trying to make any more? I can't even tell if you're referring to BR or DVD now. There are certainly plenty of expensive DVD box sets, but they occupy a small niche in a corner of the shop because people don't want to blow 40 and 50 quid at a time on entertainment media.

  • Biggles #218 3 years ago

    Rev, in your case #2, I don't think HMV would just 'shrug their shoulders' and not give a damn. New games bring people in to the store. If the publishers agreed not to provide them with new product it would have a big impact in driving consumers to those stores as well. This isn't a case of 'rights', it's bad business negotiation on the part of the publishers. They simply shouldn't stand for this sort of behaviour from a business partner and make that fact crystal clear. What consumers want to do is neither here nor there, but as a part of the publisher-shop distribution deal this sort of thing really has to be taken account of.

    That's not to say that I don't agree that prices are too high, of course.

  • merkdot #219 3 years ago

    It's questionable whether the 'hardcore' videogame market is raelly much bigger than the ~20-25 million enthusiasts who are willing to pay £40 for new titles. It's clear that prices are kept high initially because there are a few major titles like Halo, Mario, Gran Turismo, Grand Theft Auto etc. that will sell to millions of people on day one at full price.

    But of course for the crappier titles supply and demand kicks in to bring the prices down very quickly (in fact, much quicker than any of the competing formats, which sometimes even go UP in price after release).

    The publishers know their market, that there is an awful lot of people out there who absolutely must have the latest games as soon as they come out, so really if you find this model annoying, it's pretty much fixable by just being patient. One year old games are about £10-£15 online.

  • Dan234 #220 3 years ago

    4. Hire some Hollywood lawyers, re-write some agreements. Pre-owned has got to this state using the 'boiling a frog' method.

    Publishers are reaping the rewards of their constant attempts to cut retail out of the equation entirely with digital distribution. It's hardly surprising that retail is fighting back, since if they don't the publishers will continue moving towards digital anyway. They have nothing to lose.

    They have everything to lose if discs are sold at impression and packaging price + VAT. If you look at the PC section in HMV, it looks dead and there's no pre-owned section either. The same can happen to the console section. Is this in HMV's interests? Not really. They have to sell things without killing off their suppliers.

    I'm not sure what is so laudable about the idea that HMV and the rest don't share the developers' cut for games which are sold on the same floor space. Maybe it's the relationship which games journalists have with developers and the lack of a perceived value in a product which arrives in the office post daily.

    Remember the dying days of Your Sinclair and so on, with a pamphlet which costed several quid that nobody bought because it was a pamphlet and they could read it in five minutes in Smiths, laugh at the jokes, then do something else with the money? Maybe the price should have been dropped and everybody's problems would have been solved. Or possibly not.

  • canIdoyabombsforya #221 3 years ago

    "Besides which, BRs aren't actually much more expensive than DVDs. I just checked Amazon and the "Deluxe Edition" of Casino Royale on DVD and Blu-Ray has RRPs of £18 and £23 respectively, a mere £5 difference. (And the actual Amazon selling prices are only £2 different.) So your argument is nonsensical."


    Casino Royal can be had for £5.99! This is the version that the mass consumer are buying. Over the last few years the mass consumer has actually decided the 'sweet spot' price point for DVDs, and they're selling like hot cakes and still profitable. And as Rev. Stu points out there is no longer a pre-owned market.
    The DVD market has grown and grown since prices have come down. Sony don't seem to get it, they're scratching their heads trying to work out why yet another new Sony format only has 3% of the market not the 50% they wanted( by end of 2008) Greedy fuckers. You can fuck with the early adopter, but don't fuck with the mass consumer.





  • Daryoon #222 3 years ago

    I can go into HMV and happily buy the majority of films made before 2005, many of them for under a fiver.

    I can't do this with games unless I go to pre-owned sections.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #223 3 years ago

    Rev, in your case #2, I don't think HMV would just 'shrug their shoulders' and not give a damn. New games bring people in to the store.

    Only a tiny minority of hardcore gamers care about getting something the day it's released. Go into GAME now a week after any big game comes out and you'll find pre-owned copies of it. The facts remain that pre-owned is more profitable and attracts more customers - otherwise, why do game shops do it so much? They'd rather have a balance, they'd rather get those Day 1 nerds, but if push came to shove it's absolutely no contest as to who's bigger - it's the mass market, who want cheaper games and don't care if they've been out for a couple of weeks. If publishers tried muscling HMV out of pre-owned by threatening the withdrawal of new copies, there'd only be one loser and it wouldn't be HMV.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #224 3 years ago

    4. Hire some Hollywood lawyers, re-write some agreements.

    I recommend you see a doctor, because your ears appear to need syringing.

    Without publishers, what do HMV (and the other High St chains) have? A huge, popular, highly profitable trade in pre-owned games.

    Without the High St chains, what do publishers have? Fuck all.

    Until digital distribution is universal or somewhere very close to it, publishers don't have a leg to stand on, and they can hire all the expensive lawyers they want - HMV will just say "Fine, fuck off, see if you can sell 5m copies of your game without us."

  • Vermillion3000 #225 3 years ago

    Daryoon Wrote:

    I can go into HMV and happily buy the majority of films made before 2005, many of them for under a fiver.

    I can't do this with games unless I go to pre-owned sections.


    Yes you can. But you can't get the films on general release RIGHT FUCKING NOW 2nd hand for a £5 less in the same prinicpal highstreet retailer.

  • callum9999 #226 3 years ago

    As I told you earlier, DVDs are far cheaper than games so people are less likely to buy a second hand copy, therefore its not in HMVs interest to sell second hand music or films.

  • canuter #227 3 years ago

    Its wrong to sell something I own??? I can't sell my Corsa not to damage GM??? This man raves.

  • Biggles #228 3 years ago

    Rev, how about if the publishers took away all new copies of games and all promotional material from HMV and simultaneously arranged a deal to distribute their games at Zavvi exclusively (for a price, obvioulsy).

    Remeber that even though it's the 'nerdy' hardcore (or 'early adopters' to be less derogatory) who would be buying these games in the first couple of weeks, they are also the ones supplying the second hand market with games to sell in the first place. By getting them away from HMV, you'd be dealing a double blow in that you'll be hurting the stock of second hand games as well. They certainly wouldn't be able to offer those 'Buy Fable II for only £18 when you trade in X,Y or Z' deals.

    Again, this doesn't mean consumers wouldn't be able or shouldn't be able to resell games, it's that your legitimate business partners with whom you have various contracts and agreements should not be able to undermine that relationship by making a profit on your product and taking advantage of your release window advertising expenditure without sharing any of the revenue.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #229 3 years ago

    Rev, how about if the publishers took away all new copies of games and all promotional material from HMV and simultaneously arranged a deal to distribute their games at Zavvi exclusively (for a price, obvioulsy).

    Remeber that even though it's the 'nerdy' hardcore (or 'early adopters' to be less derogatory) who would be buying these games in the first couple of weeks, they are also the ones supplying the second hand market with games to sell in the first place. By getting them away from HMV, you'd be dealing a double blow in that you'll be hurting the stock of second hand games as well.

    I don't follow. If people buy their games from Zavvi, where are they going to go to trade them in? HMV, of course. (Since if Zavvi did preowned, they'd be no better in the publishers' eyes than HMV.) So HMV get the more profitable preowned sale with the bigger margin and the possibility of multiple resales, while Zavvi make less money from the initial sale and then don't get any more afterwards. I fail to see where HMV is hurting there.

  • Dan234 #230 3 years ago

    Until digital distribution is universal or somewhere very close to it, publishers don't have a leg to stand on, and they can hire all the expensive lawyers they want - HMV will just say "Fine, fuck off, see if you can sell 5m copies of your game without us."

    I'm sure Tescos, Smiths, Waterstones, other shops could manage to sell products which HMV is too good to stock at a more accessible price in return for agreeing not to have a pre-owned section (they probably wouldn't want to do it anyway). Then later on when HMV and Game start complaining they can have a chat about this pre-owned malarkey.

    You appear to be bravely standing up for the downtrodden rights of giant intermediaries who are in a near-monopoly position in their sector and have managed to find a way to wring e.g. 5 times the profit out of one item of stock without compensating their producers of said items.

    After you've finished with the games sector, maybe you could start singing the praises of renting phones off BT.

  • callum9999 #231 3 years ago

    So HMV and game are bad, because they aren't voluntarily handing over sums of money to the publishers of a game, even though they didn't buy it from them?

    Are people who sell games to their friends/ on eBay etc. just as bad because they aren't giving money back to the publisher?

  • Dan234 #232 3 years ago

    I thought the bit about (ab)using their dominant position in the market place, the preference for pre-owned stock over ordering in new stock from the publisher, and selling both next to each other on same floor space had been done above?

    This is why pre-owned ≠ second hand.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #233 3 years ago

    You appear to be bravely standing up for the downtrodden rights of giant intermediaries who are in a near-monopoly position in their sector and have managed to find a way to wring e.g. 5 times the profit out of one item of stock without compensating their producers of said items.

    Like I said, welcome to capitalism. If I sell someone a spade for 20 quid and he uses it to dig up buried treasure, I don't get a share. If I buy a painting for £50, then the artist becomes the next Banksy and the work is worth suddenly worth £20,000, the person who sold it to me doesn't get a share. The publishers have been compensated by being paid when they sell the game disc to HMV. At that point, their rights to it are over. If they don't like it, they don't have to sell.

    I have no time for retailers, who take a bigger cut than anyone else while doing less work than anyone else, even before resales are taken into account. But if there's one thing I like less than retailers, it's whining hypocrites. If you live by the market, don't bitch when you die by the market.

  • Biggles #234 3 years ago

    Sure, they can still go to sell on their games at HMV, but that's another trip in to town and you won't be able to use 'store credit' to buy that shiny new game, you'll have to settle for something else pre owned, or go for cash which might not be as good a deal. The publishers can't and shouldn't be able to stop reselling completely, but they've got the weight to fight and make it far less attractive to reduce the impact on new sales / get a better deal from the retailers.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #235 3 years ago

    No they don't. I've explained it at least three times now.

    And what on EARTH are you on about with this "another trip into town" nonsense? How does where you originally bought it make any difference to that?

  • Dan234 #236 3 years ago

    I have no time for retailers, who take a bigger cut than anyone else while doing less work than anyone else, even before resales are taken into account. But if there's one thing I like less than retailers, it's whining hypocrites. If you live by the market, don't bitch when you die by the market.

    We all live by the market, apart from the lucky few in North Korea and Cuba.

    Works of art sold at most auction houses around the world give a percentage of the resale value back to the original artist in the form of royalties.

    Music played on the radio, telly, and in public places pay a royalty to the original artist.

    Films shown on TV have to pay royalties. DVD rental shops have to pay royalties. TV show rights are bought from the production company when shown on other channels.

    What makes game developers so special? Why do you maintain they're bitching about nothing if other forms of art and entertainment have had similar agreements in place for years?

  • Vermillion3000 #237 3 years ago

    Dan234 Wrote
    I'm sure Tescos, Smiths, Waterstones, other shops could manage to sell products which HMV is too good to stock at a more accessible price in return for agreeing not to have a pre-owned section (they probably wouldn't want to do it anyway). Then later on when HMV and Game start complaining they can have a chat about this pre-owned malarkey.

    You appear to be bravely standing up for the downtrodden rights of giant intermediaries who are in a near-monopoly position in their sector and have managed to find a way to wring e.g. 5 times the profit out of one item of stock without compensating their producers of said items.

    After you've finished with the games sector, maybe you could start singing the praises of renting phones off BT.

    Lots of right! There's always another retailer happy to sell your products the way you want when you pull the rug from under the parasites.
    Also - very right about this being an attack on "giant intermediaries" and not a broadside against the rights of "the poor punter"

    Good stuff!

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #238 3 years ago

    What makes game developers so special? Why do you maintain they're bitching about nothing if other forms of art and entertainment have had similar agreements in place for years?

    Where are you getting these fantasy agreements from? Percentage of art re-sales back to the original artist? I've never heard anything so absurd.

  • Dan234 #239 3 years ago

    Use teh Google...

    [link url=http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=resale+royalties ]http://ww w.google.com/search?hl=en&q=res...[/link]

    So why is it that developers should not receive the reward that other forms of art and entertainment receive?
    Edited by 1 at 31/10/08 @ 20:55

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #240 3 years ago

    "most auction houses around the world" != UK, Australia and California.

    Even then, art is an anomaly, which isn't comparable because it deals in single originals, not infinitely-duplicateable copies. Most duplicated items - CDs, DVDs, books - receive no such resale payments. Performance rights are a totally separate issue.

    And when did developers come into this? We're talking about publishers. They've over-priced software, alienated consumers and antagonised retailers, and are getting what they deserve for it. Fuck 'em.

  • Dan234 #241 3 years ago

    Nice day for it.

    That would be because if you search for the string 'resale royalties' you will, in all probability, find that the majority of results are for English speaking countries.

    From the Australian fact sheet (PDF warning)...

    Other countries that acknowledge a resale royalty right for visual artists:
    Algeria, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Congo, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guinea, Holy See, Hungary, Italy, Ireland, Ivory Coast, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Mali, Malta, Mongolia, Morocco, Netherlands, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Senegal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey, United Kingdom and Uruguay.

    Even then, art is an anomaly, which isn't comparable because it deals in single originals, not infinitely-duplicateable copies.

    Then you haven't heard of Damien Hurst's workshop banging out works of art like a Japanese car assembly line and he receives royalties from auction houses.

    Most duplicated items - CDs, DVDs, books - receive no such resale payments.

    Because the pre-owned videogames section is unique on high street. If it existed for other media, we would be having this argument about CDs, DVDs, and books as well.

    And when did developers come into this? We're talking about publishers.

    Unfortunately developers need a publisher. Many developers also publish.

    They've over-priced software, alienated consumers and antagonised retailers, and are getting what they deserve for it. Fuck 'em.

    The argument is that perhaps the software is over-priced because of the pre-owned section. The customers are there, but a large percentage buy from the pre-owned section which does not compensate the developers (and publishers). If for every one game the developers receive, 5 are sold in the pre-owned section, you can see that prices are higher than they otherwise would be.

    Of course we can never talk about concrete figures because the likes of HMV and Game like it that way. It's a small step from saying 'we ordered in X copies of Advanced Lawnmower Simulator and sold Y copies of ALS in the pre-owned section that month' to the developer replying 'that took us 18 months to write, why can't we be paid for X + Y instead of just X?' It's a perfectly reasonable request. I've still yet to hear any rational argument against it, apart from terse comments such as 'live by the market, die by the market' and 'fuck 'em' which don't advance the debate in any meaningful way.

    You do seem to like the poor antagonised high-street retailers, so much so that you can feel that they have the right to pocket the everybody else's cut for videogame resales. There appears to be something special about videogames because Blu-Ray has a comparable price point yet does not have a pre-owned section. You say the market isn't there to support a pre-owned Blu-Ray section, but there will be approximately 1.75 million Blu-Ray players and PS3s sold by the end of this year in the UK. The real reason is more likely that Sony and the film industry wouldn't stand for it.

    The idea floated by Braben (share proceeds of pre-owned sales) is not be like the film industry's answer (wheel out the lawyers). It's meeting retailers half-way. How is this antagonising them? If anyone's antagonising anyone it's the retailers antagonising the developers because they've decided that they're entitled to the developers' cut simply for putting something on a shelf a few feet away from another shelf which holds the original product ordered in from the supplier.

    Your argument is based on separating developers from publishers and slating publishers, but if games are to be sold on physical media then publishers are a necessary evil. I'm sure games journalists have a special relationship with publishers and know all sorts of horrible things about them, but anyone who works inside any industry knows all sorts of horrible things about someone else in that same industry. It doesn't bother or interest everyone else. But what most reasonable people recognise is that the creator of any product or service deserves to be paid for it.

    Edit: Can't type (again).
    Edited by 2 at 01/11/08 @ 10:24

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #242 3 years ago

    But what most reasonable people recognise is that the creator of any product or service deserves to be paid for it.

    They do get paid for it. They get paid when they sell it, the same as everybody else who makes anything. And like everybody else who makes anything, that's the end of their transaction. It's no longer their property, and what happens to it afterwards is none of their business. Sony, or anyone else who tried to interfere with the sale of things which are not their property any more, would be told to fuck right off and would lose a fortune, which is why they don't do it. Otherwise, why don't Sony do it right now with games, which is a much more lucrative area than Blu-Ray? (Blu-Ray prices are NOT comparable to games, as you inaccurately claim. They're fractionally more expensive than DVDs, and about half the price of games.)

    All your other straw-clutching nonsense (Damien Hirst LOL) has been rehashed and refuted numerous times already. Nobody's offering to "meet retailers halfway", they're demanding money that they have no legal right to whatsoever, in return for absolutely nothing. That's not a "compromise", it's a protection racket.

    You've been told repeatedly why developers have no right to repeat payments for preowned sales, yet bizarrely claim not to have heard the arguments. Since you're not listening, I can't be bothered any more.

  • Lawlost #243 3 years ago

    There appears to be some debate as to whether you can legally sell your games once you have finished with them. The answer is no you probably cannot. There is no definitive answer as it is dependent on how the game is licensed. When you purchase a game you are buying a) the physical product, disc case and instructions and b) a license to use that game. It is the terms of the licence that decides whether you can re-sell the game. I have has a quick look at a few of my games and most but not all state the license granted is 'non-transferable' therefore I cannot sell it on without their permission. There is a question as to whether all terms of these licences are enforceable as you need to buy the game, break the seal (making it non returnable) before you discover the terms of the license, as such it is arguable that these terms were not incorporated into the contract.

    In reality though no publishers have tried to enforce the non-tranferable provision against individuals, it is far too difficult for them to police. It may be that they turn to the retailers to try and prevent them reselling, however, there is a reluctance to do so as a lot of gamer sell on to be able to buy their next game and the retailers are powerful. If publishers prevented retailers selling used games fewer games overall would be sold.
    Edited by 1 at 01/11/08 @ 15:32

  • Dan234 #244 3 years ago

    Sony, or anyone else who tried to interfere with the sale of things which are not their property any more, would be told to fuck right off and would lose a fortune, which is why they don't do it.

    It's already been explained that there's a difference between film media for rent and for sale while you maintain there isn't; you only need to look on the small print on DVDs in shops to see that some are for sale and some are for rental only and all are for personal use. That legal agreement has already been worked out between studios and retailers and pre-owned doesn't form a part of it. If some high street retailer were to set one up, they'd need negotiate with studios and update that agreement.

    (Blu-Ray prices are NOT comparable to games, as you inaccurately claim. They're fractionally more expensive than DVDs, and about half the price of games.)

    It's true I can't make you look at RRPs (Amazon) or List Price (HMV's website) for Blu-Ray discs and see comparable prices to videogames but discs are sold for those prices on the high street. We're talking about high street prices because pre-owned only exists on the high street.

    You've been told repeatedly why developers have no right to repeat payments for preowned sales, yet bizarrely claim not to have heard the arguments. Since you're not listening, I can't be bothered any more.

    I've only jumped in the last 20 posts or so. You on the other hand appear on the first page and appear on this one.

    I've explained why pre-owned is not like second hand (which I do support) because it is used by high street retailers to divert money which should received by other parties to the high street and you seem unable to respond to that.

    A little bit above you said that's not a "compromise", it's a protection racket yet I've highlighted performance rights and auction house royalties as similar examples where agreements have been arrived at; another party is obliged to compensate the creator of the work for selling or performing it. Quite plainly it's not a protection racket as practically all forms of art or entertainment have it.

    Your argument is basically that videogames can't be compared to other forms of art or entertainment and as no legal framework has yet been worked out for videogames, unlike with other media, developers shouldn't receive that money. That's true, if no legal framework exists, they shouldn't.

    However the debate is if it should exist. You can dismiss debate by saying that no legal framework exists, but the debate isn't about if it does or doesn't exist (we already know the answer), it's about if it should or shouldn't exist. In that case, we need to look at other media and when we do we find that similar agreements exist.

    It's quite possible to say 'why should videogames receive money, it's not like a piece of music' in the same way that you can say 'why should music performance receive money for performance, it's not like a tangible piece of art' but the point isn't what form the piece of art or media takes, it's if a company selling or performing something derives a benefit from it. If it does then the original creator also deserves some of that benefit. This problem has reached a point where it can't be ignored with videogames because they have a short shelf life, the retailers (re)selling them have a dominant market position, and a substantial part of the profits that should have ended up with developers have ended up somewhere else.

    You can say And like everybody else who makes anything, that's the end of their transaction. It's no longer their property, and what happens to it afterwards is none of their business. but this is quite plainly not true, it's why copyright and patents exist and have done for hundreds of years.
    Edited by 1 at 01/11/08 @ 17:25

  • Xinch #245 3 years ago

    There is some vast reading here. Some quite entertaining. But it's down to economics as every.

    Perhaps Braben wants us to play new games full whack and not play old ones? He didn't say directly but I am reading between the lines.

    If I buy a game new, I have a license ok? Then if this game comes out on XBLA or whatever in the future I should get it for free. Fact.

  • Rev.StuartCampbell #246 3 years ago

    Quite plainly it's not a protection racket as practically all forms of art or entertainment have it.

    "Practically all"? You've identified ONE - the sale of unique artworks - which is plainly not comparable to mass-duplication media like games, and which didn't have any resale royalty until very recently, after hundreds and hundreds of years without one.

  • kangarootoo #247 3 years ago

    @Rev. Stuart Campbell

    You utterly fail to include economies of scale in your reasoning. If you didn't have me on ignore you might have realised this.

    ECONOMIES OF SCALE! Its important. Look it up.

  • kangarootoo #248 3 years ago

    Good discussion this.

    retibra, you make some good points re revenue streams.

    I even find myself admitting that Rev Stu is making plenty of good points, and bizarrely seems to not be insulting everyone out of hand at the same time :)

  • Dan234 #249 3 years ago

    "Practically all"? You've identified ONE - the sale of unique artworks - which is plainly not comparable to mass-duplication media like games, and which didn't have any resale royalty until very recently, after hundreds and hundreds of years without one.

    I'm not sure why we're going round in circles here. My point, which you continually fail to address, is that every form of entertainment media's got its own peculiarities with regards to distribution and with that its own royalty scheme worked out to address them when a third party derives benefit from distributing it. As far as I can tell you still haven't been able to say why videogames are different and why that difference excludes them from a similar royalty scheme.

    And, economies of scale.

  • Unknown27 #250 3 years ago

    I've not read all the posts on this cos alot of them are inane drivel but I wanted to voice my opinion none the less. Alot of people are missing the point, he's not complaining that people sell their copies of games as second hand, it's that retailers are actively encouraging the sale of preowned over new. I used to work for a games retailer and we were told if someone came to the counter with a new copy of a game we were to try and push the preowned copy instead, and that was five years ago. Having second hand material available isn't the problem it's the fact that it's so prominantly promoted in retailers. Notice he doesn't mention ebay at all, probably the ultimate source of second hand material, and that's because they are predominantly second hand whereas (until now) HMV have been predominantly new.The reason he's concerned is that now HMV will start to push preowned over new just like GAME and Gamestation, and that WILL hurt developers.

  • Tnarg #251 3 years ago

    If a game costs £40 and £20 goes to the publishers and £20 goes to the shop and on average a game is reselled 4 times or more. That means that if a game cost £25 with £5 going to the publishers and all sells are new then everyone (apart from the shops who make more money from us by selling us second hand games) make the same amount of money. Its the shops trying to be greedy that has push the prices of games so high.