Do you feel bad about buying new(ish) releases used?

[RyaNtheSlayA]

I am not saying that prices are based on resale value. I am saying that the current prices are not sustainable without potential resale value. I strongly suspect that the industry would be critically harmed if games were no longer able to be resold, unless there was a substantial lowering of MSRP.

They were sustainable back in the old days when people weren't reselling at the drop of a hat. And it cost more back then too.

So even though used are sold more often, new sales are up also. People are buying a lot more new game now then they ever did in the 70s-90s. I personally buy around 12 new games a year maybe more. My brother who isn't much of a gamer around 5. Now let's compare that to my father who bought maybe 2 new games a year for his Atari 2600.

Which doesn't matter nearly as much, considering the cost to develop a game is much more than it was in the 80s and 90s.

[Ivo]

I fully agree with 1., but I would there WAS no reason to change it. They've been selling games for the highest price point they "could get away it", and there is nothing wrong with that.
But NOW there are reasons to change it, they're not really getting away with the static price point. It is not just the used game market. Steam, mobile games and so on. The industry doesn't have the right to survive/thrive if it is unwilling to adapt to the market. Conversely I among the ones to say "It would be nice (for us) if games are cheaper but if people buy them at that price then why should the industry lower the price."

2. I'm aware. My rebuttal is this is the industry fault, not the consumers. The "obligation" to expand the tail of games is on them. They should monetize their products!
I think it has slowly been getting "better" (which is actually a bit worse for some of us) with DLC, online subscriptions, freemium etc. It is clear that at least some segments of the industry are aware that the traditional business model is flawed in some important aspect.

On graphics and such for a while they were collectively shooting themselves on the foot. They push the graphics so hard all the time to compete with each other, but may end up harming the whole of the industry.

3. Actually I don't think a movie ticket in the U.S. is 10 bucks (I don't know though), so I was trying to catch the whole chain in the average per viewer. Which is of course quite hard.
I'm not sure I agree that movies frequently tap into the same consumer more than once. I think the main factor is just that with their tail, they tap into a huge number of consumers total. For the average movie, the guy that saw it on the theatre is not going to buy the DVD. The guy that has pay TV possibly doesn't buy many DVDs (and probably not of the movies he has seen on pay TV, particularly if he can record them with a TIVO or whatever). They get additional viewers on airlines and free tv and wring out a few bucks more per viewer there.

That said, why does the games industry not explore more of these avenues? Well actually they are starting to. It is a bit of recent phenomenon that previously paid games with online components transition into freemium models (and increased their revenue tremendously apparently). I think some airlines actually do make games available with PSPs, but it is not widespread.

Ivo.

1. Really the reason that the price hasn't changed is that there is no reason to do so. Steam and the like have become interesting experimental venues for dynamic game pricing, as their copies are generated on-demand and thus don't have to account for the various forces involved in physical releases that are part of what encourage the price inertia.

(...)

2. Movies make their money through the following methods (in rough chronological order)

• Theatrical release (main goal of making back production costs)
• Airlines and PPV
• Rental
• Home release
• TV licensing

They really wring the rag dry in terms of monetizing films. (...)
Now, it's possible for games to have a long tail on them (look at Nintendo titles) but these tend to be the exception, rather than the norm.

3. But as I pointed out above, your calculation only mirrors a single segment of the entire movie monetization pipeline. Games have reached movie-level budgets but don't have movie-level avenues of returns, so naturally the publishers are worried when a business such as Gamestop cuts so heavily into their potential sales. One other difference between movies and games is that movies get resold to the same customer all the time (sees it in the theater, rents it, buys it) but games tend not to (remakes aside).

[MrPopo]

On graphics and such for a while they were collectively shooting themselves on the foot. They push the graphics so hard all the time to compete with each other, but may end up harming the whole of the industry.

It's not just graphics. Controls get better, HUDs get better, and context actions get better over time. The feedback we get from games gets better too. All of this technology is advancing at a rapid pace because we are involved in completely constructed worlds. It provides a barrier of entry for the average consumer to pick up an older title and hurts the tail.

But you're right, there is an onus on the industry. Nintendo has definitely figured out how to keep their games selling for years. I think some genres (multiplayer-based FPS) will find it harder to keep a tail like that because of how "gotta have the next thing" people are in this day and age (how many people do you know get a new smart phone on a regular basis?).

Finally, on the subject of pricing, Steam makes it easy to adjust prices. The average lifecycle of a new big-name title is it starts at $60, then after sales die down it drops to $40-50, and then goes on sale for various low numbers at various points. Since there's no physical inventory the cost-per-unit is effectively 0, so all you have is Steam's cut-per-unit (which only happens at the time of sale). By contrast, with physical sales when you release a game you've effectively already sold it at $60/unit. Then its up to the retailer to set the price they want to sell for, as now they own the unit entirely. They start by going with the MSRP as everyone goes with that and it makes them a good profit per unit. Then they might discount it a bit to try and move more units. If I, as a publisher, want to send out a second wave of titles for $40 means that I am now forcing retailers to lower their prices to $40 or less, which can be a big screw you to any retailers who still have inventory of the $60 titles.

I definitely see prices becoming more fluid the more we move to digital only sales with physical sales being a "bonus edition". We're already seeing it with Steam, and we'll see it more.

[isiolia]

Arguably, the cost of a game isn't for the "copy", it's for the experience.

You can't resell the experience of watching a movie in a theater (legally, anyway), or sitting at a sporting event or concert, but a ticket to gain entry to those things still has value.

I think it's less a matter of the market not standing for the prices without a resellable token, and more that there'd just need to be a shift in perception.

You can certainly sell DVDs of movies, CDs of live performances, and if you have a season ticket to several sporting events I think it is legal in most cases to sell them after watching the first ones.

Conversely, it is a grey area to sell MMO game accounts, and after you "experienced" a month of it you cer can't sell that month.

Bringing a camcorder into the movie theater tends to be illegal. Many live performances don't permit recording either - though some do. Many professional/etc sporting events do not allow recordings without express permission. Consider even the disclaimers on televised events regarding that.

There are limitations on the use of things like DVDs or CDs too. They don't include the license to publicly broadcast the recordings, charge for use, and so on.

As you say, money is fungible. That time, when you're sitting, playing a game, having fun? That's what you paid for. Not the disc, downloaded bits, whatever. You converted your money into entertainment, same as going to a live event. Short of science-fiction, you can't take that away or sell it.

[Regginmad]

I buy used in the interest of getting as much for my gaming dollar as possible. I'll only buy new if used isn't available in a decent condition. I've never seen much reason to pay a premium on removing cellophane.

As for feelings about the subject, I've never felt bad about giving money to my local game shop over some increasingly consumer unfriendly game publishing company.

[MrPopo]

As for feelings about the subject, I've never felt bad about giving money to my local game shop over some increasingly consumer unfriendly game publishing company.

You do realize that #1, if you purchase new your local game shop you purchased from gets money and #2, if the game publishing company doesn't make money the stop making games, right?

[Ivo]

Bringing a camcorder into the movie theater tends to be illegal. Many live performances don't permit recording either - though some do. (...)

As you say, money is fungible. That time, when you're sitting, playing a game, having fun? That's what you paid for. Not the disc, downloaded bits, whatever. You converted your money into entertainment, same as going to a live event. Short of science-fiction, you can't take that away or sell it.

I meant commercial DVDs of movies. You can buy one, watch the movie, and sell it. Same goes for commercial recordings of live concerts - buy CD, listen, sell it. You can't sell the viewing you had or the session of listening, but you can sell the DVD and CD so that someone else can view or listen to it.

The same way, you can't sell your "playing" session, but you can sell most games after finishing it. I'm sort of not sure why you think you pay for the experience, as currently that isn't the traditional business model of most games. There are some games doing that, like MMOs where you basically pay for the time, those are more comparable with going to the theatre or to a live concert.

Ivo.

[Regginmad]

As for feelings about the subject, I've never felt bad about giving money to my local game shop over some increasingly consumer unfriendly game publishing company.

You do realize that #1, if you purchase new your local game shop you purchased from gets money and #2, if the game publishing company doesn't make money the stop making games, right?

Thats true, but they wont get anywhere near the margins they get if I buy a used copy. Some of my local stores break even on new games, and some even take a small hit.

And that is silly reasoning. way before they stop making games they'll switch to a more profitable business model. One that might not involve practices I despise as much, and perhaps I will buy new then.

[BurningDoom]

My opinion on it:
Do you feel bad about buying used books, comics, movies, or CDs? You shouldn't about buying used games, either.

[isiolia]

I meant commercial DVDs of movies. You can buy one, watch the movie, and sell it. Same goes for commercial recordings of live concerts - buy CD, listen, sell it. You can't sell the viewing you had or the session of listening, but you can sell the DVD and CD so that someone else can view or listen to it.

The same way, you can't sell your "playing" session, but you can sell most games after finishing it. I'm sort of not sure why you think you pay for the experience, as currently that isn't the traditional business model of most games. There are some games doing that, like MMOs where you basically pay for the time, those are more comparable with going to the theatre or to a live concert.

Ivo.

That's why I originally said it as a shift in how people think about games more than anything.

The basic point is that your playing session(s) have value in and of themselves. Remember, you aren't sold a copy of a game to do with what you please - you're sold a license to use the software contained on the disc, within the confines of the EULA. Essentially, you are being sold the experience, even if it's on a disc rather than via subscription fees or pumping quarters into a machine.

The question of what the license is "worth" without a physical token or ability to transfer said license is not a unique issue to games (it's come up regarding digital music a fair bit). I think it's definitely something that hasn't fully been answered/explored yet. However, I also think that it'll only become more relevant as technology progresses. As convenient to consumers as binding a license to a physical copy of the data might be (in terms of license transfer), we've already reached the point where carrying a discrete physical token for every piece of data is neither necessary nor practical.

It's the same kind of debate that most any media going digital has had.