http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive...used-games.aspx
This should shed more light. It's a developer related issue. Not all developers, but some. Basically, they make no profit off of used games and it hurts them financially.
I don't really agree. Used games do not hurt the developers financially.
What people who side with gaming companies on the "problems of used games" seem to forget is this: a used game had to have been sold new at one time. To put that into perspective, think about it this way.
Let's say a gaming company sells a game for about $60 for a new copy. Let's say a game store, like Gamestop, sells used ones for around $20. Let's say that a Gamestop store sells around a thousand copies of that used game in a single year. Multiply $60 by a thousand and you get $60,000. And it's even more if you include tax. That is the profit the gaming company had already made selling the game.
But there are more Gamestops around, so let's up the anty. Let's say in a year, a million used copies are sold, which means a million games previously bought new. That adds up to around $60 million (again more if you include tax) already made on that game.
And the numbers just keep adding up.
So you cannot tell me that used games hurt them financially. As far as I can tell, they don't. And what if someone buys a game they don't like? If they can't sell it or return it, what are they supposed to do? Just let it sit there collecting dust? Throw it out? Is it really smarter to do that than to give it to someone else who would enjoy it?
And also, gaming industries are the ones who drive people to buy used games anyway. Let's compare DVDs and video games.
When you go into a store for a DVD, you can expect them to be around $20. That's usually what new ones are sold at. Special edition ones are a little pricier, at most I think it's $30. It's very easy for someone to buy a new movie because they are cheap and affordable. It is easy for someone to buy a new movie rather than a used one.
But go into a store to buy a game and it's a whole other ballpark. A new game's price is, on average, $60. That's the price I normally see. Maybe $50, sometimes as high as $70. Not everyone carries around this much money or can afford it. Some games are cheaper in the store, but they're usually games like Bejeweled.
In that case, used games are crucial in order to get a wider audience. Used games are the only resort some people have to owning a game that they like. It makes sense. Think about it, when you charge so much for a game, you should expect people to find cheaper ways of getting it.
I know it can be harder to make a game, but I seriously cannot see any justification in selling games for around $60. That seems a bit much to me, and it alienates gamers and turns away potential customers, even more so than new DVDs do. Not everyone can buy new DVDs, but I think it's safe to say that there are more poorer people who can buy a new DVD than they can a new game.
What game developers would need to do if they want to increase profit is to either make new games more worthwhile to play without alienating people who buy used games or treating them like criminals, or they should lower their price of new games to around $30 at least. Reducing the price would result in more profit because more people can buy it.
To provide an example, let's say in a month, a store sells around 200 new games, each costing around $60. That's $12,000 profit for game developers in that month. Let's say the price of new games gets reduced, and say that the price of new games becomes $30, as suggested above. A lower price means a wider audience; more people can afford it. So let's say in a month, the number of new games the store sells increases to 600 because of the new lower price. That $12,000 gets upped to $18,000 in a month. That's an extra $6,000 in the pockets of developers.
Used games don't cause nearly as much harm as people tend to think. And if gaming companies are suffering from it, somehow, then they are more to blame than the used games because they alienate people from buying new games with high prices. If they want to turn the tides without causing an uproar from their customers, I feel the best solution is decreasing the price of new games so that more people can buy them. Or if they don't want to do that, then make the new games more worthwhile without treating used games like they're pure evil.
I apologize if I offended anyone.
