isiolia wrote:J T wrote:
Ultimately, what matters if there are more Johns out there than there are Sams and Joes. Given that gaming is such an expensive hobby and there are far more people with little money than there are people with a lot of money, I suspect eliminating the used games industry will actually hurt the gaming industry.
It's also entirely possible that it'd be better for everyone, monetarily.
As a consideration, look at the state of the PC gaming industry (which I know you do, JT). There's very little in the way of used games, especially with how many use digital distribution. Despite that, games tend to be cheaper - often a
lot cheaper when sales roll around.
Even those of use that aren't particularly keen on pure digital copies of things find stuff like Steam sales to offer deals too good to pass up. I'd say the majority of my Steam library was purchased for less than the difference between full retail and trade in credit, and I still have access to all of it.
To me, it's unlikely that if/when used games go away, it'll happen in a vacuum. There could easily be a change in pricing structure that more than makes up for the inability to recoup money spent.
That's a good point, and obviously I have bought into the Steam model of business (literally, my Steam library is huge). I think people that are opposed to the idea of used games are upset about two things: 1.) You don't truly own your games and they are now more of a service, and 2.) They don't want to only be able to buy games at full price. If you are upset about the first point, then yeah, Valve's business model and others like it are probably not for you. The second point, however, which is what a large part of the backlash against the coming generation of consoles is about, is a bit of a fallacy if the industry follows a model similar to Valve's. You are not barred from buying games cheaply. You simply have to wait until the game goes on sale. Steam trickles sales throughout the year, then has three major annual sales where almost the entire catalogue goes on sale. The sales on Steam are dramatic, so even though a new release will still cost you $60, an older game on sale may be reduced to just a few dollars.
The downside to that model versus the used game model is that any day of the year I can buy a popular title at a reduced price in a used game store. If I walk into a GameStop, I can always find a copy of a popular release at a reduced price. On Steam, I only find that reduced price during a sales period.
The upside to Steam though is that during a major sales period, I can get just about any game ever released through Steam on sale. At GameStop, the less popular titles are always more rare and hard to find on a good sale. In fact, certain rare titles have inflated used prices due to rarity, which isn't an issue in a digital distribution service where nothing is rare since everything can be duplicated and doesn't require a new print run.
The other upside to Steam, is that even when the price is greatly reduced, the developers are still getting a cut. Whether the game is sold high or low, they still take in earnings from it. People that can afford the games at the high price can buy them whenever they want, whereas people that can only afford them at lower prices have to wait for a window of time that it is on sale. There are enough windows opening that you can get whatever game you are looking for if you have the patience.
There are pros and cons to both models. I personally prefer the Steam model and I almost never buy used games anymore. In fact, I'm kind of done with consoles now because I prefer to have digital files over hard copies and I prefer the PC as a platform for a variety of reasons (though if I had infinite money and space, I would buy for both PC and consoles). Other people, particularly on this messageboard, feel quite differently and I understand that. I think people have a right to be upset that Sony and Microsoft are trying to eliminate used game sales and eliminate your rights of ownership to your games by turning them into a service instead of a product. It's a decent model for sales and if they want to fight for it to stick around instead of everyone following digital distribution or F2P models of business, then they should fight for it. Hell, I'll fight for it just because I like the idea of having the Used games model as a plan B in case, you know, Steam ever closes or I get unwittingly banned and I instantly lose access to hundreds of games (something you never had to worry about before digital distribution. Nobody "punk busted" you and came to your home and stole all your games for misbehaving online).
