That is a very nebulous statistic. I don't doubt that there is some percentage of people who wouldn't buy a game because they couldn't resell it, but coming up with a number is very hard. Especially when you consider that if a unit of GTA4 sells the publisher makes the same amount of money whether it sells at $50 or $5, as long as it's new. So all the people who might buy a $50 game at retail and resell it might instead wait for it to hit $30 instead. In both instances the same amount of money is made on the supply side.jfrost wrote:Sony does make money off the second hand market. People are more willing to spend money on games they will be able to sell off later than they are with titles they're stuck with.
Then let's throw in Steam. They frequently sell games for what would be full retail price. Granted, PC games have traditionally been about $10 cheaper than console games, but that's due to licensing costs reflected at the register. You don't have to pay anyone to make a PC game, but you do have to pay Sony to make a PS3 game.None of the services you listed sell games for the same price as retail stores do (are you willing to pay 50-60 dollars on a game you can't sell later?). Rather, they sell games for cheap (mostly). It might be a sustainable business model, but it is substantially different from the audience Sony was targeting with the first installments of the PSP, so it is also a dangerous strategy.
Personally, I don't think the console world (which includes handhelds) is ready for download-only services. With the PC world and services like Steam you still have all the assests on your drive in an easily shareable form. The only think you would lack is the Steam server to authenticate against before the game will launch. A hacked exe can bypass that and you're good to go. So you have a bit more security in that you know it will be easy to get your Steam games to run after Valve dies, or that you'll be able to find a good torrent of Half-Life 2 and rock out with it after a HDD crash. Getting backups of the downloadable games to run on the consoles is no small task. Plus, a very large portion of the Steam library has no protection whatsoever. The id pack, X-COM, a good portion of the Unreal pack, all can be bought by one person and given to all his buddies. But the console is a very closed platform.
