If you support the resale of your employer's product, you have no right to complain when that employer can't afford to pay you.
But consumers like to be able to resell things, the consumers we serve should be happy with their purchases and service. Using your rhetoric I should be in favour of any and all business practises my employer uses to make money, no matter how unscrupulous; because it keeps me hired. Also I apparently shouldn't blame those who can't pay me, only the people who don't buy our product.
People not buying games are also hurting the industry!
If you buy a new game, part of the cost goes back to the publishers and devs. if you buy a used game, nothing goes back to them.
Who cares? It's a great attitude to have, to give back to the devs, but getting a legal copy of that game consumers want is and will be highest priority. The industry is not a charity.
Unless a law forces Sony and Microsoft, they will not allow you to sell your digital downloads.
This is what I believe will happen. Well one of two things.
Right now, digital distribution is an alternative. A separate product with separate rules - I know about software licensing but I'm talking about layman consumer psychology. They own their possessions.
Digital distribution is currently a cheaper, license driven system adopted by discreet platforms (mobile) and preferred platforms (Steam). The people who enjoy using these systems and buying products through them are by and large content with the perceived values and their decision to engage them. Otherwise there is literally everyone else.
When physical media is abandoned, consumers who prefer to own rather than license will be thrown in the deep end - immediately lamenting the loss of value they used to have, like reselling goods (including cash-in-hand transaction).
They distress will probably become addressed by new laws forcing such values to be returned. The Xbone debacle earlier this year is a good example of that.
That and piracy on these platforms will dramatically improve and increase.
If you sold your car at the depreciation rate of use games, you'd lose over half its value within a year. Madden 2013 is 27.99 compared to the typical $60 retail. Not a good plan. Even after just one week, a car retains a larger percentage of its value than a used game. Games depreciate very fast.
Yes and guess what would likely be the number one reason to buy a used car? Price.
I just wanted to point out that special and collectors edition games appreciate incredibly quickly too. Too quickly.
The auto industry isn't doing THAT well, that's why you don't see the variation in design that was present circa the 1950's and why most manufacturers have merged, leaving only a few mega car corporations.
Cars use the same parts year to year with minor tweaks/additions unlike games which need completely new writing, assets, animation and code every time.
The vast majority of dealerships are licensed by the manufacturer or are the manufacturer (especially chains), hence why they often deal in one brand instead of another.
Buying a used car does prevent people from leasing new ones, causing sales of new cars to go down. The difference is that the auto industry has managed to ensure that money finds its way back to the manufacturer, even with used sales.
Games, contrary to popular belief, are not analogous to cars. Not even Need For Speed.
Games have a high economical depreciation, but almost zero physical devaluation. (assuming you don't scratch the disk)
Cars have a medium economical depreciation and a medium physical one.
Something like a shipping pallet (which haven't changed design in decades) has a low economical depreciation, but a high physical depreciation.
The problem with games is that publishers have zero income from secondhand sales, while car manufacturers still have parts sales. Unless they implement artificial depreciation with things like online passes and such. And honestly, for the moment I think that might actually be one of the better options, more fair at least than buying a 60 dollar game and having it bound-to-player.
Games, contrary to popular belief, are not analogous to cars. Not even Need For Speed.
Games have a high economical depreciation, but almost zero physical devaluation. (assuming you don't scratch the disk)
Cars have a medium economical depreciation and a medium physical one.
Something like a shipping pallet (which haven't changed design in decades) has a low economical depreciation, but a high physical depreciation.
The problem with games is that publishers have zero income from secondhand sales, while car manufacturers still have parts sales. Unless they implement artificial depreciation with things like online passes and such. And honestly, for the moment I think that might actually be one of the better options, more fair at least than buying a 60 dollar game and having it bound-to-player.
Cars aside, name anything where the creator receives second hand sales. Why is the game industry so unique that they deserve a cut of second hand sales? Parts sales are not a good example either btw, since I can buy parts from many suppliers, where none of that money goes directly to the OEM.
It is a fallacy that used games are killing new games sales. This argument has been rehashed on these forums many times. There is this belief that 1 used game purchase = 1 new game purchase... ie; if that used game wasn't there, the consumer would have purchased the new game. This is false. It is based on how much money a person has to spend, and if they only have $40, than the used copy may be the only version they can afford. I also know many people who buy used, because they think $60 is too much. If that used game wasn't there, they'd just pass on that title until the store price drops.
In addition, many people sell used games, so they can purchase new ones. If there was no longer a used game market, they would not have an outlet to sell games, thus less money to buy new games.
It all boils down to what has already been discussed. The studios need to better understand their budgets. It's not like the used game market just hit the gaming world. They can now estimate what a title will pull in, and how much they should spend to develop it. I also agree that they blow to much money on advertising. Sure, it would be cool to see your game/work on ads, but then don't complain when profits are low. And I really don't feel that watching 4 guys run around, and act like they are playing out a game, is proper advertising for a game (when it doesn't even show the actual game). I'm sure Megan Fox was cheap for the budget, and COMPLETELY necessary, because no other chic would have sufficed.
If I couldnt buy used games in the past, I would have no games or a very small amount. I had very little money growing up, still do actually. I dont see any problem with buying used.
You still can't compare used markets, they are pretty different. Video games make their money from selling the product or service to the consumer and that's pretty much it. EA attempted to add value to buying new over used but project $10 was viewed as evil.
It's all moot though, unlike the music industry the game industry has embraced digital sales. The used digital game market will end up looking like the used digital music market.
considering how a lot of software companies are going to a subscription based model like adobe, i see digital products becoming more of a service than physical product. you don't need the physical product anymore, its like cable, you pay to see the content, you don't own the content you are paying for and you cant do whatever you want with it.
when you buy a batman DVD you don't own batman, you own a plastic disk and you can do what you want with disk, but you don't own the content on the disk. you cant copy it and give it away for free, you cant edit it and give it away. i mean i guess you have the physical ability to do all those things just not the legal right to. the biggest loophole is the physical disk, if you have that then technically its something that belongs to you, so then reselling that should be okay, but if moved to service model then you pay regularly to access the content or software you want, and personally i think this model would work better and actually be cheaper for most people.
lets say a single new game is $60, but a service like netflix that would contain hundreds of games for 10 bucks a month and access to new titles for a rental fee off a buck or 2 a day, this would save most people that buy 2 or more games a year a ton of money, and they would actually have access to much more content. i know this might not be a model everyone is willing to jump on board with, but for adobe products it has been awesome.
i cant afford to buy photoshop,after effects, premiere, and every adobe product but i like to use several of the packages in varies projects and work, so paying monthly for access to all of it is awesome, and i don't go try and find a shady copy of some software i only need to use a few times a year. So adobe is making money where it would not have before and as a customer i enjoy the ease of payment and the support i get for something i am totally willing to pay the price for. not to mention free updates to every new version. the key is finding the right price point and for that price point making a service that has more value to the customer than the money spent on the service.
also, spotify comes to mind, i could never own every album and song that is on my spotify playlists, i mean i could but buying music would be my only hobby. but for a cheap price i can listen to almost every song i would want to, and a friend can make a playlist for me and i can listen to it, easier and faster than burning me a cd or making a tape.
i think transitioning over to this new paradigm will not be without issues and missteps on the side of the companies generating the content, but i think its a better way, and something that at this point is pretty inevitable when talking about any digital content, i know of many companies building the infrastructure and models for this, building their clouds, streaming their content, it is where everything will go.
An aside. I wonder which is more energy effcient. Steaming something a continent away or using a local disk. They both have drives at the end of the chain. Streaming you do have 1 disk serving thousands of users versus 1 to 1. But then you have to offset this with the 24/7 power that these servers use. While a home users can put to sleep or shutoff when not in use on the single disk.
In short, maybe in the immediate creation of the drives, streaming comes out ahead. But with long term usage, does local surpass this? The further the distance the more power is consumed. Using regional servers though cuts down on the economic effciency of having only a few central hubs.
I guess in short before we praise the benefit of cloud, an economist takes a serious look of which really produces less carbon emissions in the long term.
While I agree with notman that blocking the reselling of utility software is also not great, I can understand the greater emphasis on controlling their license. Since a lot of this software can contribute to income, the benefit to users could infinitely eclipse the cost of the software. They want to keep those piplines 1 to 1. 1 person using one machine to produce x amount of work gives 1 payment. It's a set of tools that now part of a system, rather than say a tool like a drill in your garage, owned wholly and solely by you to be there when it's needed.
Most business enter into different agreements than household users and most businesses like to play by the rules in case of audits and stuff. Businesses that don't/can't care may as well pirate.
when you buy a batman DVD you don't own batman, you own a plastic disk and you can do what you want with disk, but you don't own the content on the disk. you cant copy it and give it away for free, you cant edit it and give it away. i mean i guess you have the physical ability to do all those things just not the legal right to.
I think consumers are fine with that though. It may be a license and therefore you don't own it, but people prefer to believe they do and fight for that belief. Yeah there's things they "can't" do because it's illegal or against the EULA (nothing really stops them) but as long as it doesn't infringe on the privileges of ownership - we abide.
Reselling is part of that. You can actually modify like 10% of source material for a derivative work, so you can edit it. People shouldn't copy music and give it to friends but we damn well expect to be able to copy it onto as many machines in our household without obstacles.
Personally I'm not a fan of cloud software services. To me it gives companies too much control. As an Australian, stuff like Adobe CC is a little less great than in the US and we've even had inquiries into why they ream us of prices and Adobe almost literally said "because we can, suckers." Abode CC would be a lot more attractive to me as a 'hire-purchase' system instead of an ending subscription.
If you sell your licence you're not able to use it, so it's still 1/1 and only 2nd seller lost money. But companies "want the butter and the money for it" as we say here.
I'm not really into taxes and stuff, but once you've installed your software, it has no value, tho you pay taxes on it. What happens when someone leave the company ? When a company have financial difficulties ? Yay your licences worth nothing.
The EU court made this illegal. Autodesk or Valve has no right to forbid you to sell your softwares/games. Are they forced to give you a way to do it is another question. Juridic lines are kind of blurry. Economic war, still.
Its interetesting to think about the shift in what people are always whining about about "every game is the same, there is no new innovative games"
that would be because publishers want to actually make their money back they have to look at market leaders who have huge day 1 and initial sales surges to try and win over enough people to buy their game new in the first couple weeks to be deemed a success.
a prime example would be dead space, the original sold a few million copies and was super praised and highly loved etc. but when EA saw that almost double the amount of people who bought it had played it (used sales, rentals, friends lending etc) they started to shift the series to be less horror more action and bombastic set pieces to try and get a wider audience. then people wonder why they were having a little tantrum over there being cover shooting and fighting humans in dead space 3?
any time you hear "we need a wider audience" its probably because the game was a cult hit and sold pretty shitty in terms of new sales. so either there will never be a sequel because it didnt make its money back, or people will cry like little babies over a fucking video game becuase they changed some stuff to try and get better sales and heaven foribid...make a profit on their investment/break even?!
personally I love the project 10 dollar/online pass idea, especially for multiplayer. if the devs and publishers have to put time and effor into maintaining, patching and spending the money on energy to keep servers running and you blatantly expect to get all that without giving them a dime when you buy a game used?! fuck off?! thats a level of entitlement that is spoiling people today and turning every online internet articles comments section into a bunch of squabbling babies exactly like kotaku.
Im seriously going to laugh my ass off when dark souls II comes out and they have amped it up more mainstream to try and capture some of the dragon age/witcher crowd and people lose their shit.
having worked at EB games back when I was 17 I know exactly what a cunt company they are, they intimidate their employees on a regualr basis based on if you are not selling enough used titles or doing their shitty pushes on pre-orders etc. basically there is an air of you are going to be fired if you dont push enough used shit down peoples throat. they can get away with this becuase most of their staff is in the 17-25 range and a ton come from the uber nerd background where social skills are not the strong suit and dont feel they have the ability to stand up for themselves.
that alone is reason enough for me to not support gamestop.
I also rareley buy the argument that people cant affoard to buy games new when ususally the used copy is 5-10 dollars cheaper. if 5-10 dollars is really going to break the bank perhaps priorites are wrong. especially when you see people complaining about the lack of jobs/layoffs in all the threads around here. if games come out and bomb ofcourse there is going to be layoffs. I know I feel shitty when I see an interesting game come out and then the studio close because the commmon sentitment is "hmmm looks cool! ill wait to grab a used copy"
Edit: I totally agree with Arsh, games as a physical service is going to slowly phase out. look at the DVD/bluray market since Netflix has started to become the be all end all over the last few years. an even greater example is the cable companies. they haaaaate netflix because it basically makes people see just how dogshit their intense advertisement filled service is. I literally cant watch tv any more because of the sheer bombardment of commercials literally every 2.5-3 minutes of actual show.
Anyone who can invent a service like netflix for the game industry that really takes off will make a shit ton of money and begin to make physical medium irrelevant. I welcome this change as it means all profits will go to devs and publishers, and slimey little middle men will just get cut out. the Idea that games as a service and not just a one off product is creeping into our industry more and more.
You still can't compare used markets, they are pretty different. Video games make their money from selling the product or service to the consumer and that's pretty much it. EA attempted to add value to buying new over used but project $10 was viewed as evil.
Well, I think they're missing out on an opportunity. They should create other goods/services beyond what already exists to create new revenue streams.
As for EA's project $10. That was evil because it didn't make new copies more appealing, it tried to make used copies less valuable to the consumer. To beat the car analogy to death, it's like having your horn deactivated because you bought the car used and the manufacturer wants you to pay them to turn it back on. The thing being, that they charge you just enough that the savings from buying the car used evaporates, just like what project $10 tried to do. You don't make *new* more appealing by gutting content from used copies, you make it more appealing by including value-added services for buyers of new copies. It could be in the form of priority status to buyers of new copies. For example: buy new and you're first in line for everything the developer offers beyond the disc, like priority access to the latest free DLC and technical support. Used buyers have to wait for extra free content after they register, but they still get to have it. They're also at the back of the line for any support issues. New buyers could also get a discount on paid DLC. Include a code that's tied to the player's XBL/PSN account upon activation that they can do either on the console or through their web account portal using their own PC; punching in a complex code with a game pad is a big pain. If people are willing to wait for the used copies to show up in order to save some money, they should be willing to wait for the extra stuff too. If not, they can buy the retail copy. The point is, there's more to sell than the content on the disc or locked content on the disc.
There's also the idea of lowering prices on "risky" new titles to encourage wider adoption. The more people that buy, the more people there are playing it. Obscurity is your worst enemy. Fewer people will buy your game if they don't hear about it from the people they trust the most, their peers. Today, consumer/peer reviews are the most important thing to the younger generation for making purchase decisions. I know I take consumer reviews into consideration when think about buying something new.
I think giving new buyers preferential treatment as opposed to making used copies suck is a better approach. But none of that matters if too few people get their hands on a copy before the used copies reach the shelves. If it takes a price reduction to make people more reluctant to buy used, that's the way it has to be. You'll get less, but more than if they bought the used copy. Digital goods have huge price elasticity and you should not be afraid to use that to encourage people to buy from your rather than your retail partner/competitor.
they changed some stuff to try and get better sales and heaven foribid...make a profit on their investment/break even?!
That's fair to point out, as it is a business after all, but the consumer does not give a rats bum. Most purchasers are paying to get their desired product out of the hands of the seller and into theirs - nothing more.
if the devs and publishers have to put time and effor into maintaining, patching and spending the money on energy to keep servers running and you blatantly expect to get all that without giving them a dime when you buy a game used?! fuck off?! thats a level of entitlement that is spoiling people today
I don't see what's so entitled about wanting to get the same value we always have, regardless of how I bought it. I've played plenty of games that come with no catches for multiplayer and I don't see why that should change now. Even if there's good reason for developer/publisher actions, I can't be annoyed or lament the loss of something I previously expected?
Also why the hell don't these devs cover their own asses with built in server tools? Dedicated servers, client run servers, LAN. If the devs have to sadly shut down their services then that's sad but the game doesn't have to die with them!
I also rareley buy the argument that people cant affoard to buy games new when ususally the used copy is 5-10 dollars cheaper. if 5-10 dollars is really going to break the bank perhaps priorites are wrong.
I'm quite confident that the majority of people claiming that they could never afford new games are not the kind who buy recent $5-$10 cheaper used copies. They've probably got a history of getting 1/2 price or good bargains from pawn shops and ebay. In fact many of those types would be committing the terrible act of waiting for a game to lower in price and picking it up when they can, new or used.
The others, just want to save a few bucks. Easy Gamestop prey.
some decent points from both overlord and snacuum. I think the thing that burns my ass and why i get soe hearted is is that this is a forum for game devs and seeing so many posts latley that are straight out of the uneducated kotaku/ign comments section being tossed out on polycount left and right is brutal.
which kind of brings up an overlying idea is that yea you cant blame the consumer for wanting whatever they want, I still belive most consumers are supremely selfentiled on almost everything not just games, but if joe average -=XX[SmokesMadBlunts420]xx=- was educated on the fact used sales give nothing back to the developer of their favorite games and can actually lead to layoffs/studio closure/ no sequel they might actually give 1-2% more of a shit. I kinda got away from my original intention on my post of why people moan about not seeing any innovation in major AAA. I strongly belive publishers trying to combat used sales and go for those big initial opening weeks numbers to maintian a profit margin is part of it.
I mean look at the moblie market, there is no form of second hand/used game sales so Indie games can sell relatively low numbers and still be profitable and considered a success. example: super meat boy is considered an insane success and thats after selling around 1 million units/20k copies day 1.
If that was the case, then no one would buy a lot of products, because lot of them have been made with child labour. It's not a perfect world, and greed goes both way.
I should know, its my (Nick)name.
I think the thing that burns my ass and why i get soe hearted is is that this is a forum for game devs and seeing so many posts latley that are straight out of the uneducated kotaku/ign comments section being tossed out on polycount left and right is brutal.
Yeah that's understandable. While a part of it is inherent (no job on my part) I like being the devils advocate. This place should be filled with artists and devs no doubt, but shouldn't just have the typical opinions of them.
if joe average -=XX[SmokesMadBlunts420]xx=- was educated on the fact used sales give nothing back to the developer of their favorite games and can actually lead to layoffs/studio closure/ no sequel they might actually give 1-2% more of a shit.
Maybe. But I see an uphill battle. Like McGreed says, we still buy a lot of suspect stuff from China and the like because ethics is overtaken by the products value. It's not just hard to get people to choose the more expensive option, it's hard to sell ethics: probably because it casts the blame on the end-user that until that point just wanted to have the value of the product.
To me it's the same kind of problem the sexism debate in games is having. It's more difficult to accept change if all it's ever going to do is make you feel bad; feel singled out.
I strongly belive publishers trying to combat used sales and go for those big initial opening weeks numbers to maintian a profit margin is part of it.
Yeah there's probably some truth to that. Personally I think they do that because they're run by the same businessmen as Hollywood who are jealous of blockbuster acclaim. Even if used games were to not exist I still think they would measure success with the profits of the NOW NOW NOW
I think the thing that burns my ass and why i get soe hearted is is that this is a forum for game devs and seeing so many posts lately that are straight out of the uneducated kotaku/ign comments section being tossed out on polycount left and right is brutal.
Most people in gamedev, artists in particular, me in double particular, will never have to deal with these kind of large overarching business problems, and aren't equipped at all to think through the nuances of such major problems/decisions. Best-case/worst case opinions arise, which frames arguments like they are black and white, feeding the hive mind mentality that you'll find at IGN, Kokatu, and Reddit.
And to be fair, it's not an internet only thing, it's simply the way our society is structured these days. I ignore mindless comments on reddit about the state of the industry the same way I ignore it when my relatives jumps off the couch to scream at the quarterback about the way he should have seen an open player, despite the fact that the guy screaming is 200 pounds overweight, never played a game of anything in his life, and is watching it on a TV with a birdseye view and still only caught that there was an open player on the second slow-mo replay.
Polycount is a great community with great artists and great people, but it's not some magical bastion of business acumen, it's going to be subject to the same flaws and problems as any other physical or cyber collection of people have.
All that said, even I never really thought polycount was going to get to the point where someones wordy answer gets responded to in meme/macro form because people can't be bothered to have a conversation over 140 characters. This isn't twitter, this isn't adviceanimals, this was supposed to be a place for discussion, or that's what I thought anyways. To me, it's in bad taste. Hopefully that kind of stuff will be isolated, because otherwise there really are some good comments and discussions going on here.
I'm not talking about Europe. Fuel in that region is sky high and public transit is more prominent, so cars are not that in demand. I'm a Yank and in America, cars are a staple of living in 90% of the country. Public transit is the punchline of every joke here (except San Francisco). I paid $18,000 for my car in 2005 and it's now worth (Kelley blue book price) ~$6,000, maybe less because it has a large dent in a quarter panel.
"Redwood City video-game maker Electronic Arts, which reported $1 billion in red ink last year but paid the head honcho, John Riccitiello, $11.1 million."
So while Riccitiello was running profits and the stock price into the ground, and earning EA the distinction of being voted the worst company two years in a row, they were paying him 10 million dollars a year...
maybe detached, overpaid and incompetent leadership is actually the problem, and not used games.
As far as I can tell, this is the last generation of real consoles, so gamestop and game disks are soon going to be a thing of the past, and the whole issue will be moot.
there are two things that need to be done to cause "the masses" to move to digital media rather than physical, and then the entire used games thing will die anyway.
1. better internet speed for all - this is out of developer hands for the most part, but maybe if they struck some deals, and invested in the companies who are responsible and nudged them into making it happen?
2. better incentive to buy digital - digital exclusive content that is NEVER available to disc purchasers, or maybe even being released digitally (via PSN/XBLive) a week earlier than the physical editions. being lower priced than the physical editions...
We purchased Batman: Arkham Origins (physical) for £35 in-store, first hand with bonus content etc. as a christmas present for my son. on PSN the same game was £49.99 with no additional content. where's the incentive to buy the digital version, which has zero shipping costs, zero packaging costs... over the physical one, which SHOULD be marked up higher?
Yeah, its the same issue people has had with Steam releases vs the physical, where most of the time they cost the same, but there is also lot of cases where getting the physical version is cheaper then the one on Steam. Plus as you said, you getting a bunch of extra things.
This is also the reason I don't think that physical games will disappear completely, when you look at the ++ versions, such as collectors editions and such, which has physicial products with it, because that's what people want. They love those extra little things, I know I do and have been weeping for years because of the game boxes with nothing in them then a hotkey sheet.
oh yeah for limited/collectors editions i would still buy the physical versions. i love the statues that come with most of them!
but i think my reasons for why digital hasn't taken over are completely valid. and if they fixed those, you'd probably only ever see physical media used for collectors editions.
Replies
But consumers like to be able to resell things, the consumers we serve should be happy with their purchases and service. Using your rhetoric I should be in favour of any and all business practises my employer uses to make money, no matter how unscrupulous; because it keeps me hired. Also I apparently shouldn't blame those who can't pay me, only the people who don't buy our product.
People not buying games are also hurting the industry!
Who cares? It's a great attitude to have, to give back to the devs, but getting a legal copy of that game consumers want is and will be highest priority. The industry is not a charity.
This is what I believe will happen. Well one of two things.
Right now, digital distribution is an alternative. A separate product with separate rules - I know about software licensing but I'm talking about layman consumer psychology. They own their possessions.
Digital distribution is currently a cheaper, license driven system adopted by discreet platforms (mobile) and preferred platforms (Steam). The people who enjoy using these systems and buying products through them are by and large content with the perceived values and their decision to engage them. Otherwise there is literally everyone else.
When physical media is abandoned, consumers who prefer to own rather than license will be thrown in the deep end - immediately lamenting the loss of value they used to have, like reselling goods (including cash-in-hand transaction).
They distress will probably become addressed by new laws forcing such values to be returned. The Xbone debacle earlier this year is a good example of that.
That and piracy on these platforms will dramatically improve and increase.
Yes and guess what would likely be the number one reason to buy a used car? Price.
I just wanted to point out that special and collectors edition games appreciate incredibly quickly too. Too quickly.
Not at all true. It took 8 years for my car to lose 67% of its retail value. It only takes one year for the same to happen to a used game.
E-bay: 2011 Peugeot 207 CC, used - from £5,750
http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_sacat=0&_from=R40&_dcat=9859&Model%2520Year=2011&_nkw=207+cc&_sop=2
Brand new: £17,000, before adding potentially non-optional extras:
http://www.peugeot.co.uk/media/peugeot-207-cc-prices-and-specifications-brochure.pdf
Depreciation: 67% on the head...
Games have a high economical depreciation, but almost zero physical devaluation. (assuming you don't scratch the disk)
Cars have a medium economical depreciation and a medium physical one.
Something like a shipping pallet (which haven't changed design in decades) has a low economical depreciation, but a high physical depreciation.
The problem with games is that publishers have zero income from secondhand sales, while car manufacturers still have parts sales. Unless they implement artificial depreciation with things like online passes and such. And honestly, for the moment I think that might actually be one of the better options, more fair at least than buying a 60 dollar game and having it bound-to-player.
Cars aside, name anything where the creator receives second hand sales. Why is the game industry so unique that they deserve a cut of second hand sales? Parts sales are not a good example either btw, since I can buy parts from many suppliers, where none of that money goes directly to the OEM.
It is a fallacy that used games are killing new games sales. This argument has been rehashed on these forums many times. There is this belief that 1 used game purchase = 1 new game purchase... ie; if that used game wasn't there, the consumer would have purchased the new game. This is false. It is based on how much money a person has to spend, and if they only have $40, than the used copy may be the only version they can afford. I also know many people who buy used, because they think $60 is too much. If that used game wasn't there, they'd just pass on that title until the store price drops.
In addition, many people sell used games, so they can purchase new ones. If there was no longer a used game market, they would not have an outlet to sell games, thus less money to buy new games.
It all boils down to what has already been discussed. The studios need to better understand their budgets. It's not like the used game market just hit the gaming world. They can now estimate what a title will pull in, and how much they should spend to develop it. I also agree that they blow to much money on advertising. Sure, it would be cool to see your game/work on ads, but then don't complain when profits are low. And I really don't feel that watching 4 guys run around, and act like they are playing out a game, is proper advertising for a game (when it doesn't even show the actual game). I'm sure Megan Fox was cheap for the budget, and COMPLETELY necessary, because no other chic would have sufficed.
You still can't compare used markets, they are pretty different. Video games make their money from selling the product or service to the consumer and that's pretty much it. EA attempted to add value to buying new over used but project $10 was viewed as evil.
It's all moot though, unlike the music industry the game industry has embraced digital sales. The used digital game market will end up looking like the used digital music market.
http://boingboing.net/2013/11/13/renault-ships-a-brickable-car.html
I haven't seen anyone complaining about paying a fee to resell their zbrush license.
I was not aware they were doing that. I would disagree with this practice too, to be honest. It just strikes me as double dipping.
I hope that dies in a miserable death. That car better be really damn cheap, and the energy to charge it better be part of my 'rental' fee.
It's better than Autodesk suing anyone that tries to resell on of their products.
What a wonderful way to treat customers.
when you buy a batman DVD you don't own batman, you own a plastic disk and you can do what you want with disk, but you don't own the content on the disk. you cant copy it and give it away for free, you cant edit it and give it away. i mean i guess you have the physical ability to do all those things just not the legal right to. the biggest loophole is the physical disk, if you have that then technically its something that belongs to you, so then reselling that should be okay, but if moved to service model then you pay regularly to access the content or software you want, and personally i think this model would work better and actually be cheaper for most people.
lets say a single new game is $60, but a service like netflix that would contain hundreds of games for 10 bucks a month and access to new titles for a rental fee off a buck or 2 a day, this would save most people that buy 2 or more games a year a ton of money, and they would actually have access to much more content. i know this might not be a model everyone is willing to jump on board with, but for adobe products it has been awesome.
i cant afford to buy photoshop,after effects, premiere, and every adobe product but i like to use several of the packages in varies projects and work, so paying monthly for access to all of it is awesome, and i don't go try and find a shady copy of some software i only need to use a few times a year. So adobe is making money where it would not have before and as a customer i enjoy the ease of payment and the support i get for something i am totally willing to pay the price for. not to mention free updates to every new version. the key is finding the right price point and for that price point making a service that has more value to the customer than the money spent on the service.
also, spotify comes to mind, i could never own every album and song that is on my spotify playlists, i mean i could but buying music would be my only hobby. but for a cheap price i can listen to almost every song i would want to, and a friend can make a playlist for me and i can listen to it, easier and faster than burning me a cd or making a tape.
i think transitioning over to this new paradigm will not be without issues and missteps on the side of the companies generating the content, but i think its a better way, and something that at this point is pretty inevitable when talking about any digital content, i know of many companies building the infrastructure and models for this, building their clouds, streaming their content, it is where everything will go.
In short, maybe in the immediate creation of the drives, streaming comes out ahead. But with long term usage, does local surpass this? The further the distance the more power is consumed. Using regional servers though cuts down on the economic effciency of having only a few central hubs.
I guess in short before we praise the benefit of cloud, an economist takes a serious look of which really produces less carbon emissions in the long term.
Someone will make a crack for that idea
Most business enter into different agreements than household users and most businesses like to play by the rules in case of audits and stuff. Businesses that don't/can't care may as well pirate.
I think consumers are fine with that though. It may be a license and therefore you don't own it, but people prefer to believe they do and fight for that belief. Yeah there's things they "can't" do because it's illegal or against the EULA (nothing really stops them) but as long as it doesn't infringe on the privileges of ownership - we abide.
Reselling is part of that. You can actually modify like 10% of source material for a derivative work, so you can edit it. People shouldn't copy music and give it to friends but we damn well expect to be able to copy it onto as many machines in our household without obstacles.
Personally I'm not a fan of cloud software services. To me it gives companies too much control. As an Australian, stuff like Adobe CC is a little less great than in the US and we've even had inquiries into why they ream us of prices and Adobe almost literally said "because we can, suckers." Abode CC would be a lot more attractive to me as a 'hire-purchase' system instead of an ending subscription.
I'm not really into taxes and stuff, but once you've installed your software, it has no value, tho you pay taxes on it. What happens when someone leave the company ? When a company have financial difficulties ? Yay your licences worth nothing.
The EU court made this illegal. Autodesk or Valve has no right to forbid you to sell your softwares/games. Are they forced to give you a way to do it is another question. Juridic lines are kind of blurry. Economic war, still.
that would be because publishers want to actually make their money back they have to look at market leaders who have huge day 1 and initial sales surges to try and win over enough people to buy their game new in the first couple weeks to be deemed a success.
a prime example would be dead space, the original sold a few million copies and was super praised and highly loved etc. but when EA saw that almost double the amount of people who bought it had played it (used sales, rentals, friends lending etc) they started to shift the series to be less horror more action and bombastic set pieces to try and get a wider audience. then people wonder why they were having a little tantrum over there being cover shooting and fighting humans in dead space 3?
any time you hear "we need a wider audience" its probably because the game was a cult hit and sold pretty shitty in terms of new sales. so either there will never be a sequel because it didnt make its money back, or people will cry like little babies over a fucking video game becuase they changed some stuff to try and get better sales and heaven foribid...make a profit on their investment/break even?!
personally I love the project 10 dollar/online pass idea, especially for multiplayer. if the devs and publishers have to put time and effor into maintaining, patching and spending the money on energy to keep servers running and you blatantly expect to get all that without giving them a dime when you buy a game used?! fuck off?! thats a level of entitlement that is spoiling people today and turning every online internet articles comments section into a bunch of squabbling babies exactly like kotaku.
Im seriously going to laugh my ass off when dark souls II comes out and they have amped it up more mainstream to try and capture some of the dragon age/witcher crowd and people lose their shit.
having worked at EB games back when I was 17 I know exactly what a cunt company they are, they intimidate their employees on a regualr basis based on if you are not selling enough used titles or doing their shitty pushes on pre-orders etc. basically there is an air of you are going to be fired if you dont push enough used shit down peoples throat. they can get away with this becuase most of their staff is in the 17-25 range and a ton come from the uber nerd background where social skills are not the strong suit and dont feel they have the ability to stand up for themselves.
that alone is reason enough for me to not support gamestop.
I also rareley buy the argument that people cant affoard to buy games new when ususally the used copy is 5-10 dollars cheaper. if 5-10 dollars is really going to break the bank perhaps priorites are wrong. especially when you see people complaining about the lack of jobs/layoffs in all the threads around here. if games come out and bomb ofcourse there is going to be layoffs. I know I feel shitty when I see an interesting game come out and then the studio close because the commmon sentitment is "hmmm looks cool! ill wait to grab a used copy"
Edit: I totally agree with Arsh, games as a physical service is going to slowly phase out. look at the DVD/bluray market since Netflix has started to become the be all end all over the last few years. an even greater example is the cable companies. they haaaaate netflix because it basically makes people see just how dogshit their intense advertisement filled service is. I literally cant watch tv any more because of the sheer bombardment of commercials literally every 2.5-3 minutes of actual show.
Anyone who can invent a service like netflix for the game industry that really takes off will make a shit ton of money and begin to make physical medium irrelevant. I welcome this change as it means all profits will go to devs and publishers, and slimey little middle men will just get cut out. the Idea that games as a service and not just a one off product is creeping into our industry more and more.
Well, I think they're missing out on an opportunity. They should create other goods/services beyond what already exists to create new revenue streams.
As for EA's project $10. That was evil because it didn't make new copies more appealing, it tried to make used copies less valuable to the consumer. To beat the car analogy to death, it's like having your horn deactivated because you bought the car used and the manufacturer wants you to pay them to turn it back on. The thing being, that they charge you just enough that the savings from buying the car used evaporates, just like what project $10 tried to do. You don't make *new* more appealing by gutting content from used copies, you make it more appealing by including value-added services for buyers of new copies. It could be in the form of priority status to buyers of new copies. For example: buy new and you're first in line for everything the developer offers beyond the disc, like priority access to the latest free DLC and technical support. Used buyers have to wait for extra free content after they register, but they still get to have it. They're also at the back of the line for any support issues. New buyers could also get a discount on paid DLC. Include a code that's tied to the player's XBL/PSN account upon activation that they can do either on the console or through their web account portal using their own PC; punching in a complex code with a game pad is a big pain. If people are willing to wait for the used copies to show up in order to save some money, they should be willing to wait for the extra stuff too. If not, they can buy the retail copy. The point is, there's more to sell than the content on the disc or locked content on the disc.
There's also the idea of lowering prices on "risky" new titles to encourage wider adoption. The more people that buy, the more people there are playing it. Obscurity is your worst enemy. Fewer people will buy your game if they don't hear about it from the people they trust the most, their peers. Today, consumer/peer reviews are the most important thing to the younger generation for making purchase decisions. I know I take consumer reviews into consideration when think about buying something new.
I think giving new buyers preferential treatment as opposed to making used copies suck is a better approach. But none of that matters if too few people get their hands on a copy before the used copies reach the shelves. If it takes a price reduction to make people more reluctant to buy used, that's the way it has to be. You'll get less, but more than if they bought the used copy. Digital goods have huge price elasticity and you should not be afraid to use that to encourage people to buy from your rather than your retail partner/competitor.
That's fair to point out, as it is a business after all, but the consumer does not give a rats bum. Most purchasers are paying to get their desired product out of the hands of the seller and into theirs - nothing more.
I don't see what's so entitled about wanting to get the same value we always have, regardless of how I bought it. I've played plenty of games that come with no catches for multiplayer and I don't see why that should change now. Even if there's good reason for developer/publisher actions, I can't be annoyed or lament the loss of something I previously expected?
Also why the hell don't these devs cover their own asses with built in server tools? Dedicated servers, client run servers, LAN. If the devs have to sadly shut down their services then that's sad but the game doesn't have to die with them!
I'm quite confident that the majority of people claiming that they could never afford new games are not the kind who buy recent $5-$10 cheaper used copies. They've probably got a history of getting 1/2 price or good bargains from pawn shops and ebay. In fact many of those types would be committing the terrible act of waiting for a game to lower in price and picking it up when they can, new or used.
The others, just want to save a few bucks. Easy Gamestop prey.
which kind of brings up an overlying idea is that yea you cant blame the consumer for wanting whatever they want, I still belive most consumers are supremely selfentiled on almost everything not just games, but if joe average -=XX[SmokesMadBlunts420]xx=- was educated on the fact used sales give nothing back to the developer of their favorite games and can actually lead to layoffs/studio closure/ no sequel they might actually give 1-2% more of a shit. I kinda got away from my original intention on my post of why people moan about not seeing any innovation in major AAA. I strongly belive publishers trying to combat used sales and go for those big initial opening weeks numbers to maintian a profit margin is part of it.
I mean look at the moblie market, there is no form of second hand/used game sales so Indie games can sell relatively low numbers and still be profitable and considered a success. example: super meat boy is considered an insane success and thats after selling around 1 million units/20k copies day 1.
I should know, its my (Nick)name.
Yeah that's understandable. While a part of it is inherent (no job on my part) I like being the devils advocate. This place should be filled with artists and devs no doubt, but shouldn't just have the typical opinions of them.
Maybe. But I see an uphill battle. Like McGreed says, we still buy a lot of suspect stuff from China and the like because ethics is overtaken by the products value. It's not just hard to get people to choose the more expensive option, it's hard to sell ethics: probably because it casts the blame on the end-user that until that point just wanted to have the value of the product.
To me it's the same kind of problem the sexism debate in games is having. It's more difficult to accept change if all it's ever going to do is make you feel bad; feel singled out.
Yeah there's probably some truth to that. Personally I think they do that because they're run by the same businessmen as Hollywood who are jealous of blockbuster acclaim. Even if used games were to not exist I still think they would measure success with the profits of the NOW NOW NOW
Most people in gamedev, artists in particular, me in double particular, will never have to deal with these kind of large overarching business problems, and aren't equipped at all to think through the nuances of such major problems/decisions. Best-case/worst case opinions arise, which frames arguments like they are black and white, feeding the hive mind mentality that you'll find at IGN, Kokatu, and Reddit.
And to be fair, it's not an internet only thing, it's simply the way our society is structured these days. I ignore mindless comments on reddit about the state of the industry the same way I ignore it when my relatives jumps off the couch to scream at the quarterback about the way he should have seen an open player, despite the fact that the guy screaming is 200 pounds overweight, never played a game of anything in his life, and is watching it on a TV with a birdseye view and still only caught that there was an open player on the second slow-mo replay.
Polycount is a great community with great artists and great people, but it's not some magical bastion of business acumen, it's going to be subject to the same flaws and problems as any other physical or cyber collection of people have.
All that said, even I never really thought polycount was going to get to the point where someones wordy answer gets responded to in meme/macro form because people can't be bothered to have a conversation over 140 characters. This isn't twitter, this isn't adviceanimals, this was supposed to be a place for discussion, or that's what I thought anyways. To me, it's in bad taste. Hopefully that kind of stuff will be isolated, because otherwise there really are some good comments and discussions going on here.
I missed this post, so I'll respond to it now.
I'm not talking about Europe. Fuel in that region is sky high and public transit is more prominent, so cars are not that in demand. I'm a Yank and in America, cars are a staple of living in 90% of the country. Public transit is the punchline of every joke here (except San Francisco). I paid $18,000 for my car in 2005 and it's now worth (Kelley blue book price) ~$6,000, maybe less because it has a large dent in a quarter panel.
So while Riccitiello was running profits and the stock price into the ground, and earning EA the distinction of being voted the worst company two years in a row, they were paying him 10 million dollars a year...
maybe detached, overpaid and incompetent leadership is actually the problem, and not used games.
As far as I can tell, this is the last generation of real consoles, so gamestop and game disks are soon going to be a thing of the past, and the whole issue will be moot.
1. better internet speed for all - this is out of developer hands for the most part, but maybe if they struck some deals, and invested in the companies who are responsible and nudged them into making it happen?
2. better incentive to buy digital - digital exclusive content that is NEVER available to disc purchasers, or maybe even being released digitally (via PSN/XBLive) a week earlier than the physical editions. being lower priced than the physical editions...
We purchased Batman: Arkham Origins (physical) for £35 in-store, first hand with bonus content etc. as a christmas present for my son. on PSN the same game was £49.99 with no additional content. where's the incentive to buy the digital version, which has zero shipping costs, zero packaging costs... over the physical one, which SHOULD be marked up higher?
This is also the reason I don't think that physical games will disappear completely, when you look at the ++ versions, such as collectors editions and such, which has physicial products with it, because that's what people want. They love those extra little things, I know I do and have been weeping for years because of the game boxes with nothing in them then a hotkey sheet.
but i think my reasons for why digital hasn't taken over are completely valid. and if they fixed those, you'd probably only ever see physical media used for collectors editions.