Random News

[Colonel Skills]

Originally Posted by Seegtease

Well hold it there, I don't know if that's how it works for SURE, I just assumed they bought them at wholesale from the developer/publisher and sold them to consumers, like with any other product sold in stores.

You are correct, this is how it works.

I have no time to post the implications of the problem this creates in an industry based almost entirely on front loaded day 1 sales, but expect it when I get back from work.

[Killer_Man_]

Originally Posted by Colonel Skills

You are correct, this is how it works.

I have no time to post the implications of the problem this creates in an industry based almost entirely on front loaded day 1 sales, but expect it when I get back from work.

Oh, I know no doubt that I bet the company makes only their main money from the first two weeks of sale, after about a month or two. They don't get jack shit cause of used game purchases but you know, I always thought that when you bought used that they would get a percent back like that but I guess not...

Zeit, what do you mean whole sale? You mean that they buy new games from the devs/pubs and then sell them? Then buy up use games that the consumer doesn't want and resell them for about 10 bucks more than what they purchased them for? Then yes, that's how it works.

[Colonel Skills]

Um, yeah, that's the principle retail works upon. Buy low, sell higher. That's not the problem?

The problem lies with unscrupulous business practices and extremely poor management.

Content creators are extremely quick to point out reduced income due to used sales, blame Gamestop, blame the consumer, blame pretty much everyone and every thing they possibly can. It doesn't mean shit.

The pubs and devs are solely to blame for the loss of capital during these last several years. Budgets are OUT OF CONTROL. 50 million dollars for that Warhammer MMO? What the hell, EA. Shit, look at APB, they raised 100 MILLION GOD DAMN DOLLARS for it, and there was...less than 10000 people who bought it. Less than TEN THOUSAND. Think about that for like, a minute. Let it sink in.

And yet, this sort of hubris and bullshit is common. There is only so much money to be made in the "hardcore" market , and everyone is continually investing more and more and more to capture it, and when it backfires, they blame everyone but themselves.

Due to the transient nature of games, everyone is banking on day/week/month 1 sales. To capture the interests of the week, they make increasingly large budgets for increasingly large risky ventures, and the market just does not support that. Their revenues remain constant, but the investment put in to capture more is disproportionate and impossible to maintain.

It will burn itself out, and instead of looking inward to realize that blaming the one who pays you by coming up with hackneyed and false bullet points like "used game sales cost us more money" and "used games are equivalent to piracy" to either guilt trip the consumer or to blind the content owners themselves from looking into the real issues will just end up killing more companies in the long run.

Also it'll drop off new sales as you repeatedly fuck the consumer more. Look at UFC this year THQ. NOTICE A TREND MAYBE? (Pssst, the gaming dollar these people get back by trading in games gives them the money to buy something else new off the shelf, just a hint. And look at that, your one copy is still owned by one fella. Isn't that neat how it doesn't cost you anything extra?)

[Killer_Man_]

Also THQ has even put in that their new wrestling game will have a one time 'online' code for those who want to play online. To 'fuck' the used game buyers.

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Room 418

Friday, August 27 2010 - 12:00 AM
by: Tycho


We saw an incredible Craigslist ad when we were getting ready to write the strip, an ad which quickly became the strip we were trying to make. Another ad went up shortly thereafter, in response. Also good!
This sort of thing happens in the margins of any con; the first of those, anyway. The second is more likely to be a PAX-specific phenomenon. In the periphery of any social gathering, tiny conventions are created and dissolved continuously. When my anonymity was better preserved, I could wander the halls of the attached hotels and bear witness to the full Venn Diagram of geeks as a people. I want to emphasize that I'm talking about the whole diagram, here.
I mean the entire diagram.
It turns out that used games are a tremendously controversial issue. Part of the reason response to the comic and post has been so massive is that (aside from our inflammatory presentation) this conversation has been a long time coming. The thing for the commentariat to do about this issue typically is to carve out as populist a stance as possible, to cluck and tut tut about it so as to ingratiate themselves to you as much as possible, and then follow up by posting a picture of a belt buckle. That strikes me as a bit precious.
Because this is the Internet, every argument was spun in a centrifuge instantly and reduced down into two wholly enraged, radically incompatible contingents, as opposed to the natural gradient which human beings actually occupy.
People who buy used games are not pirates, by definition. Used games (used everything, really) are and will continue to be a legal and protected form of commerce. Other industries have done what they can to co-opt, destroy, or harvest those markets, but their existence is settled law. What I have said is that the end result of that purchase from a developer perspective must be indistinguishable. Isn't it? That is the question I couldn't answer. I still can't answer it. And because I couldn't, I had to change the way I invested my leisure dollar.
People want to talk about used cars, or libraries, or any other thing really, but I'm not talking about the universe in general - I'm talking about the tiny part of it I have any control over. That bit up there is the part I can't resolve: the moral dimension contained within the purchase. Yes, I'm giving somebody money when I buy used. Is that sufficient? What is the end result, and what systems am I sustaining by doing so?
I'd rather not think about things like this, believe me. I'd rather be Mr. Perpetual Good Times, but I'm not built that way. On the whole, I'd say thinking has been a tremendous inconvenience.
(CW)TB

Apparently Penny Arcade did a strip on it. http://www.penny-arcade.com/


Besides the fact that even if people can't 'buy' used games because back when I was younger. Before I even heard of the store caleld Funcoland(A used video game shop for NES/SNES/Sega and etc). Before Gamestop moved in and as well bought them out.


I would wait three months before buying a game which meant that I am paying about 50% of the price anyway... So either way, regardless of who gets my hard earn Abe Lincoln and Andrew Jackson.(Get it? It's 25 bucks) Either way they are still techincally 'losing money' on it.