Shops "defrauding the industry" - Braben Comments by Oli Welsh

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.

Elite 4 or GTFO

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

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

Ironic, this - I've been wishing I could 'trade-in' Lost Winds since about two days after I bought it.

But no, I never trade-in games I love. I've a massive collection, and manufacturers have to understand that once I've got two or three shit-hot driving games in my collection, I'm not paying over twenty notes for a new one until it offers me something original. That's why I spent thirty five quid on Pure the other week. Sure, I can get it new for £25 now, but I don't care, it was fresh and worth the investment, I hope the software house behind it enjoy their money. They've earned it.

Plus, Braben must live with the Karma of his attitude towards Elite:TNK - Christian Pinder was performing a public service there and building anticipation for Elite 4, so Braben asked him to cease and desist, which has made it only slightly harder to get a copy, and now there is much awkwardness about Elite-based Homebrew. For shame.

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.

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.

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.

@ 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!!!

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

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.

*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!

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.

"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

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.

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.

@ 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

I've just realised who sells a £40 game for £15 a fortnight later... chavs. Always in fucking Hull Gamestation I used to queue for up to twenty minutes to buy a game, as the chavs haggled with the weary emo till monkeys over a quid on the price of something half their estate already traded in yesterday, either for being 'gay' or lacking a wank soundtrack MC'd by DJ Atomika, the shitbag.

Chavs will buy whatever looks cool. Bioshock or Twilight Princess type games are anathema to chavs, for they know naught of Randian philosophy and have no love of 8-bit gaming tradition used to define supposedly modern titles. Yet Nuts or Zoo or whatever will review quality titles in a way these inbred tracksuit-in-sock clones can understand and they buy them up and fuck them off to get Need For Speed: Iceland Car Park instead, 'cause it's fucking sick, and the bird is fit, innit?

But Spend they do. Without them spazzing my income tax via JSA on every quality title that emerges in the first week or so of release, first week sales would never come close to justifying the initial expenditure on Gears, Far Cry or Mario Galaxy. And if the chavs can't undo their 'mistake' a fortnight hence, they'll not shell out in the first place, they'll simply go down the market and rebuild that old console modding black market which seems to be in decline this generation. We need them, and they won't play unless they can trade, and without them we'll not get the high-budget 'vanguard' developments being green-lit at all. And the industry is today so profit oriented, were a collapse in the current model due to chav absence happening, I think we'd see the market disappear almost entirely.

Publishers and Brabens think they are being robbed of profit by the second-hand market. Rather, it is the very existence of this market that empowers them to develop the stuff that does come out in the first place. They must be careful what they wish for. They may not know what they have until they lose it.

Now, maybe a cynical market of 'real gamers' would precipitate a market which favours the like of Lost Winds, in dev cycle terms. No bad thing, whatever my misgivings about that particular title. But in today's market I've managed to get a Wii and a 360, so I can play GTA4 and Boom Blox and Space Giraffe, so whichever way I turn there's affordable variety, cutting-edge titles and retro hardcoreness.

Damn, it feels good to be a gamer. And anyone who wants to change how things are progressing right now is a spoilsport who should get on with Elite 4 or let the rest of the world have a go.

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.

It's not an obsession if one has lived in Hull, I can assure you.

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

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.

@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 :)

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.

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.

balls. People dont half talk shit on this forum.

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

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.

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

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...

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.

@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.

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?

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.

@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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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!!!

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

This.