Pre-Owned games. You game?

[Captain Fabio]

It's fine, it's interesting because I've been asking my friends and so far every one of them agrees with the pre-owned business, so I can't really have a discussion like this anywhere else. (:

As you mentioned, game companies are businesses. They're not charities that are dedicated to bringing us the best games because they love us and want to take a loss to make us happy; they're out to make money, just like every other business.

Say you like a particular brand of soap because it has a certain scent. It's more expensive than other brands, but that's okay because you're willing to pay the price required to get that scent that's unavailable anywhere else. Other people, however, are all spending their money on the cheap unscented soaps, and your company is in danger of going out of business. Do you blame the people that don't buy your soap, and try to get other brands banned from being sold? The analogy isn't perfect, but the point of it is the free market system. If you feel like your money is best spent on a new game, that's fine, it's your money. But if a business is going under, trying to limit everyone else's options on what to buy isn't the way to handle it. Part of the free market is that everyone is free to buy legally whatever they want, and if a business doesn't profit from it, they need to change their system or they'll go under. The job of the consumer in a free market society is to buy what's best for them. The job of the business is to make what they're selling what's best for the consumer. As long as it's legal, it's free market.

Insert reference to Nazis and communism here.

Good good! Don't want you thinking I am berating you with bias comments.

That is an interesting example and, I guess, it is valid, since there are other stores that do compete against each other for the right to pull consumers in to buy the same product. However, I feel that if there was no pre-owned section of the retail market, I highly doubt gaming shops would go out of business and struggle. The gaming industry is one of the biggest around and it certainly isn't going to die anytime soon, in my opinion. Gaming companies do put offers on, for example, the new 3DS that has only just come out. I saw many shops offering different bundle deals that was off their own back. This, I don't have a problem with, because they are, in a sense, agreed with the companies before hand, since they are given guidelines as to what they can offer and the recommended retail prices.

Games companies have many different options for a consumer to draw them in. Things like loyalty cards that give you points in which you can spend to get money off games and consoles, even if it isn't a huge amount per game. But I think things like this help companies stay afloat, if they were in trouble for example.

For me, the pre-owned market is nothing more than to make a greater deal of profit for the retailers. I know we have both said that they are business and they need to make a decent profit, but what I am really trying to say is, they wouldn't exactly struggle if the pre-owned market was there.​

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[Luck]

Sure, but then used game prices would go up and there would be no point in even buying them.

Maybe for current generation games, but I bought all of my PS2 games used, not because of the price, but because it was my only source. I'm sure most people buy older games for the same reason.

I thought you said this was a "moral obligation" sort of thing? If so, it applies regardless of whether the company is losing $500, $50,000, or $500 million.

Whenever a new copy of anything is available for a slightly higher price I will buy the new copy. I'm not going to go out of my way to buy an obscure title from the 1980's so that the [probably dead] developers will get an extra $5.

Not sure what you're trying to say here.

The publishers also suffer losses if the developer releases a crappy product. While retailers do serve a purpose, they don't have anything to do with development, and I doubt they suffer more than the developers and publishers when a game flops.

I'm glad your snippy, sarcastic replies are up to snuff, but that didn't answer my question at all. You're suggesting a very specific, very damaging move for retailers to take, and then pretty much saying "eat the losses" because you're not giving any alternatives to the business model they currently have.

You're right, apologies. Retailers across the world would surely die if they took the lions share instead of everything.

Even if I didn't have an alternate solution, that wouldn't mean what they're doing is right.

I'm sure EA would be fine without the 10 or so dollars as well. Once again, you're falling into the pit of "X company is more important than Y company" syndrome.

I'm absolutely sure that you would agree that a game developer is more important than a retailer. And EA would suffer a higher loss than Gamestop. While Gamestop would lose $36 for a new copy, EA would lose everything with a used copy.

I'll restate that as much as you think Gamestop and the like don't do anything for games and don't deserve as much money because they objectively (read:completely subjectively based on your own opinion) do less work than the game developers and publishers. If Gamestop was so unnecessary, then game companies would stop using them to sell their games. They would get more money off of it because they could charge the same price, and get all their money plus the cut Gamestop would normally get. If it wasn't wanted, it wouldn't exist.

I never said they were unnecessary.

I was referring to DVDs, I thought that would be obvious because as you said used movie tickets are impossible. I guess you just took that as another way to sidestep the issue and try to get a jab in at me instead of actually replying to what I'm saying.

Alright then, as far as I know DVDs don't require a huge budget to create since the movie has usually turned a profit. The DVD is a way to squeeze the last bit of money out of the product before it no longer makes any more money.

Just like games, some movies make a ridiculous amount of money and some flop. Call of Duty: Black Ops made $360 million in the first 24 hours; that does not make the point about Shenmue flopping invalid, does it? Just like Inception made fistfuls of money, so do some games. Then there are movies like Cutthroat Island, which spend $115 million in production and got $10 million of it back. It pushed the production company into bankruptcy. Movies have the same issues as games.

If this was against a rule or a law, this would have ended by now. Every game business would have sued Gamestop, the pre-owned industry we have right now would have died (or at least been made less public and given the air of piracy), and you would be able to sit on your high and mighty horse and know that you were right. This is not an issue of if Gamestop can or can't sell pre-owned games. By the laws, they can. It's an issue of convincing others to not buy those pre-owned games because your morals believe it's wrong. Why should I be bound to your moral obligations?

Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's moral. Companies can find loopholes(not that I'm calling this a loophole) to avoid paying any federal taxes, that doesn't suddenly put them in the right.

Anyways, games are a different market, and used games are hurting the industry quite a bit now. Movies are more successful and mainstream(and thus make profits), and authors require less resources, so they make more of a profit. With the exception of a few extremely popular games like Call of Duty, games have nowhere near the same rate of profit for their budget.

I'm done, I'm tired of this now.

 

[Yurusumaji]

If the game isn't good enough to warrant me to purchase it brand-new then there really isn't much I can do about that. The problem is that most games these days don't offer me any incentive or are not good enough to warrant a $50-60 purchase and therefore in many cases I buy pre-owned if possible.

I feel bad for developers, but if they want to make more money then they should make more games that don't suck. Or release more demos! If I really like a demo, I'll buy the game new since in most cases the demo comes out right before the game. Unfortunately very few games get demos these days.

I guess it just feels to me like the developers could be doing more to help themselves and are simply choosing not to. In this case the sales they lose on pre-owned games is their own fault.
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