So if you think that there are too few new IPs on the market, no one can take that risk if their game is at risk of being resold too many times. ... So on the positive side you could see more games being created because of this, and also more new IPs, because there'd be a bigger market for games that don't have for instance multiplayer. There could be awesome single player-only games, which you can't really do these days because people just pirate them, which is sad. - Patrick Bach, CEO of DICE
Well...that's one stance on used games that we've never heard before. I don't exactly believe it, but I guess it makes just as much sense as other arguments.
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Well...that's one stance on used games that we've never heard before. I don't exactly believe it, but I guess it makes just as much sense as other arguments.
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How does that work?
Piracy =/= Used games
AT
ALL
Seriously game developers are getting worse every year.
You'd expect that used game sales would spur more creative development of game because, well I dunno, BETTER GAMES DON'T GET SOLD BACK?
Actually, the thing preventing new/innovative titles is game studios not making said new/innovative titles. I know, shocking.
Honestly, I don't see what's so bad about used game sales...
@Bobbuffalo Well, for the developers it is actually kind of the same. Used games let retail locations make money but non of the profits go to the publisher/developer. The same goes to piracy.
Aside from the profit that was already made when they sold the game new the first time.
This doesn't make any sense, and used games are not the same as pirated games.
If there is anything blocking new IPs or novel gameplay experiences is the high cost of developing AAA titles to HD platformss. This turned the AAA games industry in a hit based system very similar to the Hollywood blockbuster movie industry and its reliance in sequels and remakes. Whatever I look to lower cost development platforms, such as the DS or iOS, I see a explosion of creativity as the business model don't penalize much the publishers for taking risks.
It's a shame so many iOS and Android developers feel a need to try and copy the console experience.
@nGenWell, when someone pirates a game someone originally bought it.
C'mon man. You must be joking. When someone buys a game, sells it to a store and a new person buys it used, that game goes out to one person. With piracy, one person either buys or steals a game, rips it and posts it online, and it goes out to tens of thousands of people.
Piracy and used game sales couldn't be further apart. Personally, I'm getting really sick of these devs complaining about used game sales. Who the hell do they think they are telling us we can't sell something that we bought? Would anyone buy a car or a house if you were never allowed to sell it later down the road? It's insane for them to keep b*tching about used games. Just make better games that people want to keep and stop putting out yearly entries that make the previous titles obsolete.
the only thing that kinda makes sense with used games is the comment on single player games. With multiplayer games you have it and can play it alot for a long period of time but with single player games, you are usually done within 20 hours and their isnt much else to do after that. This leads to people buying games, then quickly selling them back...
I feel like this is kinda a nonarguement for "stopping the creation of new/innovative games" though
"Used games shot my dog and ran over my Grandma!"
"WHAAAAAAAAA!"
I can't believe that there are still people out there who will support this stupidity. Are some gamers so addicted to their games that they'd be willing to let developers do anything that they want just so long as they can get their next fix? Even if it means they then take that fix away the following day and require them to buy it again?
I have never felt so depressed for the state of the games industry or for game fans in general.
In the immortal words of Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth: I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
@LegendofSantiago
...What are you talking about?
oh just stfu and make a game worth purchasing new, until then, you and your nazi publisher can go f yourselves.
When you resort to using online passes, offline passes and all that bs your game DESERVES to get pirated and if I didn't face the risk of getting into trouble for it I would go around encouraging everyone to pirate any game that has an online pass or disc locked content in protest to stop this bs.
I really hope nintendo have the power to stop this kind of bs from happening on the wii u without losing third party support, sadly i can't see that happening.
Not that I condone game piracy but, to developers, if you buy a game used you might as well just illegally download it. To them it's more or less the same because no matter what they don't see a dime.
But I'm really sick of hearing developers whine about used game sales.
There's a big difference between perceiving a used games customer as a thief and actually stating publicly that they feel that way. It's the complete and utter lack of tact that's incredulous.
Most companies see their customers as little more than walking wallets. How many of them do you think would be willing to risk the inevitable backlash they would receive if they actually publicly stated it? Not once, but over and over and over again as game companies have been doing for the past few years?
In any other industry they would be decimated by the bad press and customer outrage. With games, they seems to have engendered a sort of stockholms syndrome.
I will never, until the end of my days, understand how gamers can not only accept such treatment let alone actually encourage it.
This!
People wouldn't buy used games if they felt like new games were worth the money.
But what happens when you don't want a game anymore and you want to sell it on Amazon? Used Games are always associated with overpriced Gamestop prices and I find that not to be the case for every used game.
I think gaming as a medium is a different case then most other things in the used market.
Take for example, when you buy a vehicle new, you buy it from the brand's lot. Furthermore, they do maintenance, sell used vehicles and help finance vehicles as well. Sure you can get used vehicles made by that company from other lots but they have so many forms of income it doesn't effect them, furthermore cars depreciate in value so they're not at much risk.
For movies, the main focus of how they make money is by box office sales which we all know tickets CAN NOT BE RESOLD. They do make an income from physical media sales and digital but hardly even a fraction in comparison to box office tickets which is the reason why they don't care about used dvd & blueray sales (not to mention digital sales are pretty high for movies).
For music, the cd, digital and record sales are actually a fraction of the income musicians make as most of their money comes from concerts and live appearances.
Video games however, unlike everything I just mentioned make their sales off the software sales alone, kind of like computer software, however when you buy a console/handheld game (normally) you are not buying the serial key but rather the actual disc/cartridge with the exceptions being the relatively newly implemented online pass games and some online RPG's such as PSO ep1&2 and FFXI.
Not to mention, while retail prices go down for games that have over saturation, for games that have gone out of print, both new and used prices sky rocket (see One Piece Unlimited Cruise and Metroid Prime Trilogy).
What this means is developers who are making retail titles, on the HD systems in specific, that have large budgets and need large returns, need those sales in order to make a profit. However when you have quite a few stores that make up a huge chunk of game sales, especially to a large majority of the gaming crowd who most of these more expensive games are aimed at, and they're more focused on pushing used game sales reinforcing the pawn shop mentality giving trade in bonuses for used games, telling the employees to push selling used games, and to price used games competitively with new games so they make max profit, this hurts the developers who worked really hard to bring you, the gamers, these experiences.
What this ultimately will boil down to is publishers and developers looking for other means of making money such as ads in games, pay to play subscriptions, pay to win dlc models, online passes, video game serial keys that bind the game to your accounts, localized games becoming digital only in EU and NA and day 1 DLC for games that have huge let down endings (ya I went there Mass Effect 3). The fact of the matter is, publishers and designers have to make profit and need sales the same way other industries do. As the prices for game creation go up, developer that want to make quality and innovative games on consoles that do retail games will become rarer and rarer as most publishers aren't willing to take the risks which is also why you can expect to see very different pricing models and ways all 3 console companies do business this next generation.
While that is an interesting view, I feel like that *isn't* the (main/biggest) reason they don't take risks.
Western developers/publishers don't make new IPs because they only make what sells the most. They are content pumping out the same things over and over because they know they'll get tons of money.
Japanese developers/publishers don't make new IPs for similar reasons, but also because they are pretty set in their ways. They've been making these games for a decade or two and are comfortable with them and know that people want them.
Pirates only pirate the same games that sell millions. There's the odd person who pirates *everything* just to have played everything, and people who pirate lesser known games, but those numbers are insignificant. Nobody is rushing to pirate your crappy game. If it sells badly, it's not because people are pirating it, it's because it was a bad game or you made no effort to promote it so nobody took the risk buying it.
Known IPs are bought more often (and pirated more often) because fans *know* they are good, they get ads shoved down their throat and stuff like that.
As for used games, people buy them because games are too expensive. Multiple big releases together for $40-60 each comes out to way too much, and with Nintendo systems this past gen, there were no demos, so you just had to wing it and hope for the best on a game. Most people aren't willing to blow $50 on something they don't know, which is why so many niche titles do badly on Wii, but anything with a big name on it does great.
Nintendo's games (with few exceptions) are also some of the *only* titles that don't naturally drop in price. If it weren't for the Nintendo Selects thing, Twilight Princess still would've been $45-50. For a glorified New Play Control! title.
Big-name companies that whine about piracy and used games are just doing so because they want the extra money anywhere they can get it. They're not affected nearly as bad as they act. And I don't know how EA gets away with their online passes. Not only is it unfair for 360 owners (who pay for online as it is), but EA closes down their servers all of the time. So you run the risk of spending $10 and then having EA removing the online anyway.
Small companies use piracy and used games as a scape goat to explain why their games did poorly.
Fact of the matter is, if used game sales were stopped, or a system blocked them somehow, people would simply buy less games and definitely not buy any niche titles at all. Games without a big name behind them would no longer sell in any form and this would *further* stop the creation of new/innovative titles because people would only be willing to pay full price for their favorite series and maybe a few random titles.
That or everyone would have to start hoping for "long tail sellers" and that people will pick their game up once it drops on its own.
However, I can't fault companies for making their shady DLC and incentives to buy new. It's the same thing as how when a band makes no money through their CD since people just download it, they can make their money through concerts and merchandise. They need to make more money off of their games somehow. It's annoying, but it's a sort of insurance so that those who bought used will wind up giving the company money for something. Be it to play online, DLC, disc-locked content or whatever.
The downfall though, is that for a company like Capcom who has gone insane with DLC, people like myself will not buy some of their games new BECAUSE of the way their DLC and on-disc nonsense is handled. I'm not going to pay $60 for a game, $20 for new characters and another $20 for costumes, all of which are on the disc. I'll give Gamestop/Gamefly $15 for your game and buy your DLC on discount, if at all. And that's nobody's fault but yours. Sure, tons of people don't care and will rationalize it, but that's how I'll speak with my wallet. I get to legally experience your game and you don't get to swindle me.
I have no problem supporingt companies/brands that I like and I will buy DLC for games I enjoy.
The only reason I buy a lot of used games is because I simply can't afford to spend $60 on everything, but I also do not *buy* most games until a year or two after they come out. The only exceptions are my birthday or Christmas and when it's something huge like Xenoblade.
I have a huge backlog. I don't even get games that often anymore and by the time I buy a company's game used, they're already releasing a sequel or it has already sold a respectable amount.
And that's my final thing; People buy used games at the lowest price they can, which means they buy them much, much later after release. Used game sales do not affect a game when it first comes out. Most people still won't buy your new game from Gamestop Used if it's only $5-10 cheaper. They'll wait until the game is at least around $25. So if your game does bad at launch, that's because it did bad at launch. If someone's "waiting for it to drop" as a used title, they are relying one people to have bought the game in the first place and the only way a lot of people can get the game used is if a lot of people bought the game new in the first place.
So I don't know. I think I wrote too much. Boo me.
Here's the problem with this scenario: Why are development costs going up so quickly? It's because developers want to spend that amount of money. No one is forcing them to make games with massive budgets. They're doing that themselves. Unless Sony and MS are going to devs and telling them that if they don't at least spend X amount on a titles budget that they won't let them publish it on their systems, then the fault falls squarely on developers shoulders. And even in this hypothetical scenario it still would because they don't have to make games for Sony or MS.
If their whole excuse for needing more money is just so they can keep up with the Joneses then there really isn't any argument at all. Developers need to get their priorities sorted out. They don't need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to create new and interesting ideas. They just need the willingness to do it. They don't have that though because coming up with new ideas is hard. Spending money is easy. And gamers get the shaft.
Actually most developers don't want to spend insane amounts of money making games. This actually goes more into the business side of things where development studios get bought up by publishers that want the games to be big and shiny. The developers that do want to show off what the systems are capable of, do also spend a more substantial amount of money and need publishers as well which, on today's current consoles, boxes them into a retail model. Of course outside of the costs of making the games, there's the costs of advertising, packaging and distributing and if the game is in demand in other regions, there's the added costs of the previously mentioned things and the costs of localizing. If the game is trying to be a bit more decent quality (by today's standards at least) the added costs of quality voice acting and orchestrated/licensed music raises the price again.
Not every game needs all of this, of course, I'd easily take an indie game like Minecraft over most retail titles however, a pretty big majority of people who buy and play games as a hobby want that from their retail purchases. They'll be more likely to buy games like Conduit or Redsteel 2 (even more so for established series's such as LoZ) as they look and sound great and have a familiar play style, not games like A Boy and His Blob and Lost in Shadow which though they're not critically and commercially successful, they're the more unique and original experience. Furthermore, what little sales they could make are further stripped away by a very strong used game market where people who beat the game or just didn't like the game can trade them in and the game can be resold over and over without the developers and publishers making money off their work.
At one time, the only retailers doing this were pawnshops but now when you have major chains like Best Buy, Hastings, and Gamestop all bolstering used games and trade in programs and online retailers that are based around these markets, it becomes increasingly hard for games like these to make sales as they can always be bought for cheaper used. Not that they're really worth the same price as big name fully featured titles such as SSBB however when games like De Blob 2 and Conduit 2 which cost more to make, have more content, and push the hardware a lot more don't sell well either and what little sales they do make get traded and retraded time and time again through the used game market. This puts companies out of business and stops publishers from being willing to take chances. It is because of this, that developers who are making games like these and publishers who are helping put out games like these have to get their games out in other ways so they can make revenues to continue making games. This is also the reason why the console companies are scrambling to change up how games can be sold and revenue can be made as more developers and publishers are focusing on other devices/platforms where this isn't an issue (such as steam and the app store).
@jraics I'm not saying it's an excuse, but still. The developer doesn't get money either way.
Then why do they continue to return to said publishers over and over again? Why not find a smaller publisher who is willing to let them spend what they want rather than continue to push up budgets?
Retail has nothing to do with this so I don't know why you mentioned it. As for the other added costs, yes they are there but they've ALWAYS been there, and some always will be even for DD games. But advertising costs have really skyrocketed. Games used to be able to sell millions upon millions of copies with little to no advertising. Now they need to spend 2-3x the development budget to advertise them? Something has gone very wrong.
No gamer really needs any of that. But the reason people buy into it is because developers and publishers have been pushing them for years. More or less they've trained the market to react only to big games. Reason? The big publishers and developers are trying to corner the market. They LOVE the fact that small and mid-tire developers are being squeezed out. They think it means more money for them. However, they forget that as those small and mid-tire developers are forced out all that's going to be left is an ever shrinking existing market as their current customers tire of playing the same games over and over again.
As game prices rise, retailers need to make more money too since fewer customers are going to be willing to buy them. Same with the big developers and publishers forcing smaller competition out. Those games sell less now and so they have to find more resources of income. Hence the growing used games market. Why aren't retailers allowed to try and make more money while developers and publishers are? They're the ones making these games available to customers in the first place. Developers and publishers have no right to take advantage of retailers and then complain when they too seek out new, and completely legal, revenue streams. With the push for a DD only future I'm surprised some retailers haven't already cut games completely.
In the end though, where are all these used games coming from? How has the market gotten so huge so quickly? I doubt GameStop somehow managed to convince gamers that they're games were worth the insane price they're willing to pay for them, not without developers and publishers first devaluing them themselves. Obviously gamers don't see much extended value in their games anymore or else they wouldn't be selling them.
It all goes back to the lack of incentive for gamers to keep their games. And that lack of incentive can be traced directly back to developers and publishers.
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