Game Developer Proposes Ideas to Stop Pre-Owned Sales

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David Braben, founder of Frontier (Lost Winds, Thrillville) has some interesting ideas that developers can use to avoid consumers from trading in their games to get newer ones. In an interview with DevelopMag, Braben proposes that “struggling” developers should utilize unique box codes or create single-use incentives.


Another option would be to offer extras - or even part of the game itself - packaged in with the game as a unique code on a scratch-card. If you do this, then those extras could only be obtained once.


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What do you guys think of his ideas?

Can you think of incentives to make you not resell a game?

Do you see reselling as a problem?

Do you resell your games?
 
I don't get rid of my games unless they suck, but I still think this idea is awful, because it potentially limits how you can use what you're buying. It sucks to have this sort of shit in place on the PC, and it'd suck if it were brought to consoles.
 
Well why bother now?
I mean, maybe not next generation.. but the generation after THAT (The PS5 era) games will most likely be all downloaded anyway.
/Opinion
 
This idea sucks and I would NEVER buy a game that did anything like this.

Here's to hoping that developers think this is a shitty idea too.

TBW
 
I have an idea for developers that will slow down people trading in their games. Make good games with lasting appeal. I don't trade in the good stuff. Only the crap I don't want.
 
In a way, this is already happening on consoles: all the Collector's Edition games that are released with all kinds of garbage. While you can still resell them or buy used copies, if the extra swag is really important to you, you kinda have to buy it at release or really take your chances.

I don't have a problem with stuff like "Buy a Brand New copy and get the exclusive use of the Red Hulk" or crap like that. So long as the bonus isn't a significant percentage of the content. If that makes people feel special and earns developers a little more money, it doesn't bug me.

But, rather than do crap like this -- which will cost developers extra to implement -- why don't they just -- oh, I don't know -- price their games a little lower?
 
I think the end result would be a decrase in game sales, I for one am only willing to spend $40-60 on a new game because I know when I'm done I can resell it and get at least half my money back.
 
If you can't resell a tangible good, everything might as well be digital download. However, that would also reduce the value consumers would be willing to pay upfront.

It would definitely make me think twice or thrice every time I thought about purchasing a game. I don't think he would want anyone doing that on the games he is responsible for. Just saying.
 
[quote name='Rei no Otaku']I have an idea for developers that will slow down people trading in their games. Make good games with lasting appeal. I don't trade in the good stuff. Only the crap I don't want.[/quote]

I think you may be onto something here. It's just crazy enough to work!
 
[quote name='magiic']Not being able to resell my game would give me incentive not to buy it in the first place.[/QUOTE]

Exactly.
 
The only way that these incentives would work is if they were HUGE. As in, 10% more levels in the main game, game-breaking weapons in multi, some random bonus mission like Ada's Story... it'd need to be something like that. If it were, of course, people would revolt against, and the idea fails. There really isn't a great way to do this.

If you're going to resell your game, you likely aren't concerned enough to want to get it back in the future. There also will be a contingent of people who simply won't care and keep buying pre-owned anyway.

It's either go big or don't do it... but neither way will be effective.
 
I can see their side of it, but they can go to hell if they want this. Besides, nine times outta ten - what they consider extras are useless fragging trinkets for people with a bad case of OCD collecting.

(the good collectable stuff is always sold by itself any way *runs off to buy COOL trinkets* :p)
 
Anything to stop reselling would suck. I keep pretty much no games. I'm not a collector and I almost never play a game twice.

If games ever went download only or to something like this that prevented resell I'd probably quit gaming. I couldn't justify the price of games if I couldn't sell/trade them when I'm done with them.
 
[quote name='Rei no Otaku']I have an idea for developers that will slow down people trading in their games. Make good games with lasting appeal. I don't trade in the good stuff. Only the crap I don't want.[/quote]
I think the best thing to do would make pricing on all games more in line with DVDs. Maybe $40 360/PS3 and $30 Wii/PC (with budget games in the $30/$20 range or less). I would bet that the extra sales would exceed the extra $20 lost per game and net publishers and developers even bigger profits.

As it stands a $60 or $50 is a major purchase to the vast majority of gamers, while lower priced DVDs are much more "impulse buy" friendly. Lowering games to a more "impulse buy" friendly level would most likely benefit many games.

If you look at a site like The Numbers (note that I don't know exactly how accurate their DVD sales numbers are, but they are the only numbers I can find) you'll see major DVDs pretty much always start strong, but they also stay strong for several weeks. Many games on the other hand, especially hardcore games, seem to drop like a rock after the first week. With a lower price point I believe you would see far stronger second, third, fourth and even fifth weeks, with subsequent weeks having higher sales figures then games do now.
 
Like I said over at Destructoid, what makes game publishers/developers so damn special? Games are not consumable, so why should they be treated as such? DVDs, CDs, books, cars, houses, etc. all get re-sold and you don't see those industries crying and bitching about the used market. Well, maybe with music.

If the game developers/publishers want to strip away my rights of ownership (the ability to lend, trade, sell, smash) then they had better start charging the same price as a rental, because that's what they're trying to foist on us.
 
As someone said, make better games. 3/4 of my games are bought second hand (or traded for). But I make a point to buy the games that truly deserve it on day 1. I completely understand his point of view but I am vehemently against any form of control applied to a material object that you purchased and that would make me avoid it like the plague.
 
[quote name='Rusty Ghia']Like I said over at Destructoid, what makes game publishers/developers so damn special? Games are not consumable, so why should they be treated as such? DVDs, CDs, books, cars, houses, etc. all get re-sold and you don't see those industries crying and bitching about the used market. Well, maybe with music.

If the game developers/publishers want to strip away my rights of ownership (the ability to lend, trade, sell, smash) then they had better start charging the same price as a rental, because that's what they're trying to foist on us.[/quote]

Truth, I'm not sure where the games industry gets the idea that they are special and should somehow be protected from the Used market.

If you want to stop people buying used then make games cheaper, instead of trying to make games $60 because they're in HD now, or some crap excuse like that.
 
[quote name='magiic']Not being able to resell my game would give me incentive not to buy it in the first place.[/QUOTE]

This.

If people think PC sales are bad now, wait till console games have *ANY* DRM feature. I would most likely only buy AAA titles, and so would many others killing of all the niche third party publishes/any title that doesn't get atleast a 85+% average. Companies like Atlus and many others would go under because no one would want to plop down $60 and be left with a game that doesn't appeal to them or sucks.
 
What I don't get is how video games are able to keep their price up for so long. You can go to a circuit city and look through a bin of $5-10 DVDs, and if you looked at video games that were as old as those DVDs, they're still $50. I'm sure DVDs are able to drop to a lower price since movies make a lot of their money at theatres and the DVD probably isn't that expensive, but why aren't more older games dropping to at least $30? Specifically, why the fuck haven't you started Player's Choice for the Wii or DS, Nintendo? :mad:
 
[quote name='Kaijufan']I think the best thing to do would make pricing on all games more in line with DVDs. Maybe $40 360/PS3 and $30 Wii/PC (with budget games in the $30/$20 range or less). I would bet that the extra sales would exceed the extra $20 lost per game and net publishers and developers even bigger profits.

As it stands a $60 or $50 is a major purchase to the vast majority of gamers, while lower priced DVDs are much more "impulse buy" friendly. Lowering games to a more "impulse buy" friendly level would most likely benefit many games. .[/QUOTE]The problem is that many games costs several millions to make these days, especially on PS3/360. Many games have cost around $20 million to make. Developers cannot break even selling cheap. The weak USD right now makes it even harder to break even at $60 (I'm fine with games becoming $10 more expensive because EVERYTHING has gone up, food, gas, utility bills, etc.).
 
[quote name='The Mana Knight'](I'm fine with games becoming $10 more expensive because EVERYTHING has gone up, food, gas, utility bills, etc.).[/QUOTE]
So as long as ALL prices instead of one price go up your ok with it?
Insanity.
 
This is a horrible idea. The only way I would support it is if new games dropped to $10 at retail. Knowing I can resell a game if I don't like it or if I finish it plays a part in about 90% of all of my purchasing decisions.
 
[quote name='The Mana Knight'](I'm fine with games becoming $10 more expensive because EVERYTHING has gone up, food, gas, utility bills, etc.).[/QUOTE]
Blasphamy. That an infraction.
 
[quote name='Kaijufan']I think the best thing to do would make pricing on all games more in line with DVDs. Maybe $40 360/PS3 and $30 Wii/PC (with budget games in the $30/$20 range or less). I would bet that the extra sales would exceed the extra $20 lost per game and net publishers and developers even bigger profits.[/QUOTE]Another thing about DVD pricing (and CD pricing, for that matter) is that a new product is RELEASED at a sale price, then goes up to a higher price where it stays for a while. Meanwhile, pretty much all AAA video games are released at full price right out of the gate. There's the occasional deal where you buy the game on release week and get some sort of gift card, but in general you're paying the full $60 no matter what. I wonder how sales would be affected if games got sold at a noticeable discount on the first week of release, like DVDs?
 
The real problem is that these devs count all used game sales as sales they could have made money on.

Any clown that thinks I'm going to shell out $50 on the second 3D Castlevania game in the chance it somehow made a miraculous improvement over the first one needs to go back to sleep. But for $10 I might give it a whirl.
 
The other issue with these schemes is that they would also kill rentals. Just a bad idea all around, and again a total move to such a system would more than likely make me just give up gaming.
 
[quote name='The Mana Knight']The problem is that many games costs several millions to make these days, especially on PS3/360. Many games have cost around $20 million to make. Developers cannot break even selling cheap. The weak USD right now makes it even harder to break even at $60 (I'm fine with games becoming $10 more expensive because EVERYTHING has gone up, food, gas, utility bills, etc.).[/quote]

It costs at lot more to make a movie.
 
[quote name='willardhaven']It costs at lot more to make a movie.[/quote]

Movies also have a larger target audience to appeal to. And they are generally studios with a lot more capital that are able to pump out these crap titles in the hopes that they'll sell for something, whereas good developers come out with a fraction of the titles.
 
Good points, I think that games should occupy a price range similar to DVD season box sets.

I would say 30-40 for most games, with big-budget games like GTA and FF hitting 50.

These prices are just my personal opinion, I have no problem with the current price landslide system (games release at 60, I get them next year for 15-20).
 
the only way to make people buy new games is to include something that the user would take and not give when they resell. for instance, if you bought soul calibur 4 and it included a key chain or something, you'll more then likely keep the key chain when you resell soul calibur 4. but it'll have to be something that is worth more then a key chain and something that will make people want to buy new rather then used.

digital download is a terrible idea because it's not tangible. what will happen is that people will demand lower costs for newer games. right now we typically pay $50-$60 for a new game depending on the system and only the regular versions of the game. however, when digital downloads occur, people will want to pay lower then that amount since it'll be restricted only for that console, only for that account, etc.... btw, when i mean low, i'm thinking $20-$30 dollars.
 
the reason i sell my games if i have is because games are too fucking expensive. if brand new prices went down to $40 i would totally be buying a hell of a lot more games brand new. but as far as 60 dollar games go...fuck that for the most part.
 
[quote name='Rei no Otaku']But movies have ticket sales to recoup some of those costs, which is why DVDs tend to be cheaper.[/quote]

DVDs tend be cheaper because movie companies have found that DVDs can be very lucrative with the right business model.

Before DVDs (yes, there was such a time), releases on VHS were much more expensive. Tapes and laser discs tended to start at $30 and often were much more expensive. The $50-$70 movie was pretty common.

What happened? A few things. The market grew. Costs reduced (DVDs are cheaper than tapes).

But more important than that, the strategy changed. Movies went from something that only collectors and die-hards bought to impulse-buys. The movie companies exchanged low-volume/high-profit (per-item) for high-volume/low-profit with the result being greater sales and profit overall.

The current games model is like the old VHS model with a decay curve -- make the product expensive so that profit is maximized, but then over time drop the price.

Movies are now more expensive than ever, but the cost of movies on DVD is cheaper than ever. I don't know if it would be successful for games to adopt the same model, though there's a lot of evidence that $20 is a magic price point for a number of items (including movies and games) for consumers, and if you price your item at $20 or below, consumers will impulse-buy it.
 
As someone else said a big part of the problem is that they count used game sales as sales that they miss out on. While this is true its only because a game isnt at the buy in price yet. Most solutions gamers will find ways around if they are not willing to pay the price(for instance gamefly useage would go way up probally).

The only sure fire way to avoid this is lower the price of games, but then you just loose sales that way. Personally im extreamly cheap. The only 3 games I can see buying on day one in the next few years is RE5, Diablo 3 and if announced a new Kingdom Hearts and even then I might just grab gamefly for a month to play them then buy them when the price drops to under $20. Generally I dont buy games till they are $5-$20($20 is a max)because there are just soooo many good games to play that I can afford to wait for price drops and always still have something to play.
 
Actually, what's funny about the idea isn't that it gives you any motivation to keep the game, it's really a disencentive to buy the game used. On the whole, I'm not really against it (we have it now).

But, I have to say, I buy most of my games used. If I start missing out on critical gaming elements from this, I won't buy those games (much like I don't buy games that expect me to pay $5-$12 a month in a subscription fee on top of my XBL amount that I pay).

Really, if you want to kill off the used market for a game, do 2 things.

1) Price retail games out the gate for $20-$30. When new games start at $30, I'm often very tempted to buy it, just so I can play it with people going through it the first time. Games like Morrowind GOTY, R-Type Final, and Mega Man Collection all retailed at $30, and I jumped on them all. This gets quite a few people waiting for used price to jump early, helping to shrink that market.

2) Make a reason to want to keep the game. Either allow people to create/share their own levels (a la Blast Works), or have planned free or very cheap DLC that is worth playing. These sorts of ideas (if implemented well) can build a community around your game that can withstand the next new game coming out.

3) Simply make great games. Games like Halo 3, Grand Theft Auto 4, Oblivion, etc have communities of players that play months and years after release (for Oblvion anyway, since the other 2 haven't been out a year). This isn't marketing (marketing can get you to buy a game, can't make you play a crap game 6 months later), it's because the games are good. If you make great games, and you can get people to play it, you won't have these extra little worries. Rockstar doesn't have to fear about used copies of GTA4, the game sells because it is fun.
 
I'm guessing that the movie industry doesn't have a big problem with second-hand DVD sales, I'm not sure I've ever bought a second hand DVD.

And the reason is that DVD's aren't that expensive so people are happy to buy them new, so make games cheaper, don't make them $60 then bitch cos people buy them second-hand.
 
If devs want a cut of the used market, then they can start opening up their own shops and start a "dev certified used game program" Otherwise they can stop complaining, cause' that'd be great.
 
[quote name='benjamouth']I'm guessing that the movie industry doesn't have a big problem with second-hand DVD sales, I'm not sure I've ever bought a second hand DVD.

And the reason is that DVD's aren't that expensive so people are happy to buy them new, so make games cheaper, don't make them $60 then bitch cos people buy them second-hand.[/quote]

The MPAA is spending all of their lobbying money on what they label as their anti-copyright infringement effort.

They are leaving our right of first sale for physical copies alone only because they are busy setting themselves up for complete control in the digital realm by seeding broken backup functionality and DRM in the hardware, the middleware, and the content.

They're counting on the general public to ignorantly traipse headlong into a digital coup-d'etat where they hold all the cards and consumers no longer have any rights, but rather a smattering of revocable privileges controlled by copyright owners.
 
[quote name='camoor']The MPAA is spending all of their lobbying money on what they label as their anti-copyright infringement effort.

They are leaving our right of first sale for physical copies alone only because they are busy setting themselves up for complete control in the digital realm by seeding broken backup functionality and DRM in the hardware, the middleware, and the content.

They're counting on the general public to ignorantly traipse headlong into a digital coup-d'etat where they hold all the cards and consumers no longer have any rights, but rather a smattering of revocable privileges controlled by copyright owners.[/quote]

Yeah thats probably true I guess, but lets face it whatever they try and do people will hack it and steal stuff.

I don't know what everyones worried about, everything in the future will be free anyway, don't you people watch Star Trek ??
 
Indeed. The class between consumers and copyright holders is only going to get more vicious as we move in the digital era. It will be interesting to see how it plays out, but we can be pretty sure that there will be a long period of things getting worse for consumers before it gets better.
 
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