Why do videogames have such a short shelf life?

[J T]

If you go to a retail store to buy a new DVD or CD, you will find a mix of new releases and older titles. You'll have hundreds or even thousands of selections. If you go to buy a videogame though, you will only find games from the last couple of years and maybe a selection of 100 games total. I don't get this. This industry seems to be shooting itself in the foot by not making older games available. It also creates this perception that a game doesn't matter by next year. As retro gamers, we know this isn't true, but why does the business of games act this way?

It's interesting to watch the top selling sales charts on Steam because any time a decent old game gets featured on a special, it inevitably rises to the top of the charts. There is this market of people out there that still want to play these games, they just won't ever pay full price for the old games, but if there's a marked drop for a sale, they all come out of the woodwork and make a purchase. I think digital distribution will crush retail stores simply because retailers don't know how important the historical games are. GOG have made quite a name for themselves and they have only ever had one new release (The Witcher 2). Gamestop certainly makes a lot of money on pre-orders and used new releases, but the core of their service is in selling games that aren't on the shelf anywhere else.

Game companies are always complaining about the used market taking away their sales, but if they are so stupid as to make their old games unavailable on the market, then of course they are going to lose sales.

[MrPopo]

Nintendo seems to be the only console company that seems to understand that you can make a lot on continuous sales; look at the performance of the various first-party Wii titles this generation.

[flojocabron]

Shelf space, cost and demand, wheter its an In thing. Relevance in the business model.

There are so many reasons.

Retail sellers cant keep product that doesnt make money, thats why stuff goes on clearance.

Why does new product come out yearly? If that isnt done, then new innovations dont come out as much.

Do you think it would be feasable for Wal-mart to sell Dreamcast games over a decade old? Not to mention supplying enough product to all of their stores only to not sell enough to make it profitable?

Millions of dollars in transactions are at stake and when a game is a flop even more so.

Although the cost of pressing a disc is very little, Companies invest high amounts of money in the marketing, manufacture, packaging and exporting the product to all the stores across the country/world.

They want a sure deal. For current gaming systems. Something they know will sell.

Finally when something becomes old product and Tens of millions of games have sold, the final thousands of copies left over can go clearance. Only for the new game to come out and then the cycle begins anew.

The same cannot be said for older systems. Those games in some mass resellers eyes are not profitable.

We like our classic games, but like I said, some people want a sure thing that will sell millions, not thousands.

[noiseredux]

I've thought of this too quite a bit. In fact I'm always kind of fascinated when I go to a random Best Buy or KMart or something that happens to still have a good sized PS2 collection. In fact, I'm sometimes tempted to buy a brand new PS2 game in this setting just because I can -- knowing full well I could hunt out used copies cheaper. With that in mind, I know that if every store still kept a big selection on their shelves (and more importantly, publishers kept printing them) there could certainly be an audience.

[KDub]

It is very true, compared to the other media markets (books, music, movies) Video Games have the shortest life span. This has a lot to do with the constant new systems obviously but even in each generation they just kind of toss the games that have been out for a year aside.

I think it has a lot to do with the constant want for something more advanced in gaming from the general market. Obviously here as retro gamers, the game is what matters to us and we can appreciate what the game was able to do at the time and always appreciate the game play that stays timeless. But the general market (especially now!) wants the next thing; the next graphics update, the next game mode, the next story, the next wow factor. While this does exist in the book, movie and music medias it isn't nearly as prevalent. People still listen to music from all decades!

This is made worse by how games are made now, they are made more disposable. To me games use to have great replayability (for the most part). Big titles were always crafted to make you want to come back and play through the story again, just like a movie or a book. Today....not so much. They want you to buy one game, play through it, and come back as soon as possible and buy the next minor upgrade.

[Ivo]

I think the answer must lie on differences from other longer shelf life products (books, movies, toys). Reasons like limited shelf space of retailers sure contribute but they also contribute to books and movies. So what is the difference?

I think a direct comparison with books, movies and toys will reveal some relevant points (not the only ones and maybe I'm overstating these)...

1. Technology matters more (compared with books and movies). Whether we agree that it should matter or not is not the question, but that the consumers do show a preference for stuff with better graphics. This also happens to some extent with movies but not so markedly despite with some notable jumps (e.g. VHS to DVD).

2. "Fashionable" plays a relevant role. This is particularly obvious when you compare with some toys, which also have extremely short shelf life. Some books and movies also suffer from this, others don't. It seems there is a "marketing push" or similar for a game title that "artificially" pushes its desirability and it sells because of that, usually not being that much above average on its own merits it is forgotten (same for some toy line, or movie, or book).

3. Games are fragmented. A DVD will generally go into a DVD player, games are for a specific system. Shelf space for movies can have many titles for DVD. Shelf space for games has a few for PC (usually very few), the exclusives for each system, and the multi platform games repeated across the systems. May also include display stands for different handhelds and consoles all competing for space, so of course keeping all the current gen stuff and older "generations" is quite different to what happens for movies and books.

I also agree digital distribution is going to be good on this front, and eventually graphics are going to peak at a plateau where making them better matters less and less even to the crowds. This has (I think) happened years ago for movies (compare blockbusters FX, I guess?) and we are probably quite close for games.

Ivo.

[J T]

I get your points flojocabron, but I feel like those are the rationalizations of the gaming industry, but I think there actually is an untapped market that they are missing out on. Certainly not every game deserves to be on shelves 10 years later, or even 2 years later, but if you look at board games for example, which our industry is similar to, then you will find that games come and they go, but you'll never have any trouble finding a copy of Monopoly, or Clue, or Operation. I just think our industry should be able to say the same for Metroid, Mega Man, Castlevania, and many others. The gaming industry isn't doing it right. If a kid plays some new sequel of one of those games on a modern console and gets curious about the original game, often his only sensible option is to pirate since it takes so much effort and physical space to go out and buy an old console, old controllers, and an old television.

If the industry was smarter, they would find a way to make the classics be readily accessible for purchase. There are some smart decisions, such as how a few newer games have pre-order bonuses that include the older games in the series, like how Alice: Madness Returns included the original Alice (if you bought it on console anway). Or the virtual console on the Wii makes old games available to you. I guess we sort of suffer for the fact that there isn't a universal platform that all games can be played on (well, except the PC of course, but that's not particularly user friendly).

[noiseredux]

I get your points flojocabron, but I feel like those are the rationalizations of the gaming industry, but I think there actually is an untapped market that they are missing out on. Certainly not every game deserves to be on shelves 10 years later, or even 2 years later, but if you look at board games for example, which our industry is similar to, then you will find that games come and they go, but you'll never have any trouble finding a copy of Monopoly, or Clue, or Operation. I just think our industry should be able to say the same for Metroid, Mega Man, Castlevania, and many others. The gaming industry isn't doing it right. If a kid plays some new sequel of one of those games on a modern console and gets curious about the original game, often his only sensible option is to pirate since it takes so much effort and physical space to go out and buy an old console, old controllers, and an old television.

If the industry was smarter, they would find a way to make the classics be readily accessible for purchase. There are some smart decisions, such as how a few newer games have pre-order bonuses that include the older games in the series, like how Alice: Madness Returns included the original Alice (if you bought it on console anway). Or the virtual console on the Wii makes old games available to you. I guess we sort of suffer for the fact that there isn't a universal platform that all games can be played on (well, except the PC of course, but that's not particularly user friendly).

exactly! I agree with this entirely, and like I've said I've spent a lot of time thinking about the same thing.

[BoringSupreez]

I think one of the biggest reasons is that different games run on different systems. An NES game will run only on an NES, and a Saturn game will run only in a Saturn, while a 1950's movie on DVD will run on any DVD player just as well as a new movie would. I notice that with PC games, the selection often includes much older games (example: Age of Empires 2) than I see in the console sections, because a PC can play all the old stuff unlike a game console.

[sabrage]

People don't want to buy old games at full price. I think the constant industry focus on "New new new!" can be derived from that fairly easily.

As far as why that is, take any number of the "Why are you playing this old game? The controls/graphics/sound/story/multiplayer is so bad" comments heard by friends who don't understand our hobby.