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

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?

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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).

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.

@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.

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.

@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.

@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.

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.

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.

try finding call of duty 4 second hand

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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, 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.

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."

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.

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.

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

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, 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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?