game in serious trouble?

Nymins said:
I'm not saying you can't, I'm saying if you care about game developers you shouldn't.
Click to expand...

Most people don't 'care about game developers' anymore than they 'care about vacuum cleaner manufacturers' or 'care about phone manufacturers'.

They are businesses producing products which we buy - not charitable foundations. They do not exist because they love us, they exist because they can maximise shareholder value by producing products we want to buy.

The market is made up of far more than just those of us who post in the PC Games forum, you know.
 
Nymins said:
Tbh, I don't mind people like yourself or anyone here selling a game. But when a company bases pretty much their entire profits of doing it, I find it wrong.
Click to expand...

So you think the following business types are wrong and should not be allowed:

a) Used car dealers
b) Second hand shops
c) Watch dealers
d) Estate Agents
e) Boat Sellers
f) Ebay

What a completely odd position to take.

The act of being able to trade in a product you no longer want to fund the purchase of one you do is responsible for many, many sales.

How many new cars would Ford sell if you couldnt trade in your old one?
How many new phones would HTC sell if you couldnt ebay your old one?
How many new houses would Barrett sell if you couldnt sell your old one?

And the more pertinent question...

How many copies of MW3 would GAME have sold if you couldnt trade in MW2 towards it?


On the one hand we have people wanting retailers to reduce price on new products as much as they can. Yet on the other you have the same people wanting retailers to be unable to sell the one product area where they actually make decent margin. The margin on software and accessories is tiny - less than 10%. The margin on preowned is much much higher.

This goes towards keeping the stores you know, actually open?
 
Last edited:
mrbell1984 said:
Big stores like super markets. The bigger companies are sucking up the smaller ones.
Click to expand...

It would seem this is what many people on here want.

Two places in the country where you can buy physical products.

1) Supermarket
2) Online

What a fantastic place we'd live in if that were really the case. Well, provided you could move for all the people standing in dole queues obviously.
 
mrbell1984 said:
Big stores like super markets. The bigger companies are sucking up the smaller ones.
Click to expand...

Which is leaving more room for small independent shops.
Shooping Streets(out side the centre) seem to be revitalising with farm shops, deiles, custom furniture shops and other relative niche shops. It's how it should be and needs to go.

I love Gloucester road in Bristol, it's amazing. Everything from a beer brewing supplies shop, to Asian supermarkets, to small label clothes shops. These are the streets we need more off. Not these massive chain shops which you can buy online for far cheaper.
 
Last edited:
Glaucus said:
Which is leaving more room for small independent shops.
Shooping Streets(out side the centre) seem to be revitalising with farm shops, deiles, custom furniture shops and other relative niche chops. It's how it should be and needs to go.
Click to expand...

The problem is of course that a major city centre is not sustainable with a few small independant stores alone. These stores, welcome as they are, need footfall to survive.

And this footfall is driven by bigger brand stores as well. A good city centre has an electic mix of major brand chain stores and specialist independants. Bristol City Centre is full of people because there is such a variety of stores. As a result, they then find themselves in the specialists as well.
 
[TW]Fox;21001082 said:
So what?

The concept of reselling items you dont want anymore - and selling used items for less than new ones in retail premesis - is thousands of years old. Why are games publishers so special that they should be exempt from this oldest of old methods of trading?

It's nothing like piracy - for a start, piracy is a civil offence whereas selling things you dont want second hand is not.
Click to expand...

There should never be any reason why people should not be able to sell on games they've finished with.

However, as I pointed out earlier in this thread, and the other thread...

Legislation exists in this country that stops retailers from putting used copies of Films and Music right next to the brand new copies, and thus pushing those over the new copies.

It makes a lot of sense and it's the reason why Publishers want the same legislation applied to the games industry, given that they are also often categorised similarly to music and films anyways.
 
[TW]Fox;21001242 said:
The problem is of course that a major city centre is not sustainable with a few small independant stores alone. These stores, welcome as they are, need footfall to survive.

And this footfall is driven by bigger brand stores as well. A good city centre has an electic mix of major brand chain stores and specialist independants.
Click to expand...

They aren't in main city centre area and I can't see them being there, rent prices are far to high. Unless all shops leave. Then rent would crash.

Even the village near where I grew up is starting to get new relevant shops after decades of decline. A lot of it is due to change in purchasing and people tapping this new(but old) way of shopping locally sourced goods. Although they still haven't learnt most people work 9-5 and they still have half day Wenseday wtf, how old fashioned,
 
Last edited:
Liampope said:
Nymins - stop digging. You aren't half talking a load of carp! :)
Click to expand...

I'm not digging myself anywhere. Why did you post that as your first contribution to the thread?

I just expressed an opinion and people here as usual seem to take way over board with some strange comparisons.

Its an opinion, that will obviously not change anyone else's here and thats it.
 
IMHO preowned isn't quite the new-sales cannibaliser people think is. I've not worked there for a few years now but certainly when I was there getting somebody to pay £34.99 for a preowned copy of Call of Fifa Woods 2011 against a new one at £39.99 was almost impossible. They took the new copy every single time. By far the biggest volume in preowned was the cheaper sub 20 quid stuff - games that were 2, 3, 4 and more years old.

Almost everyone, faced with a new release or a marginally cheaper used alternative, went new.
 
Nymins said:
I just expressed an opinion and people here as usual seem to take way over board with some strange comparisons.
Click to expand...

I suggest you brush up on your debating skill if you think 'But selling used product B is acceptable' is a 'strange comparison' to somebody saying its unacceptable that the sale of used product A is allowed.
 
[TW]Fox;21001288 said:
I suggest you brush up on your debating skill if you think 'But selling used product B is acceptable' is a 'strange comparison' to somebody saying its unacceptable that the sale of used product A is allowed.
Click to expand...

I just think the comparison of selling a £35 video game and £4000+ car is silly. Two different markets, different revenues from the companies within the markets etc etc.
 
Nymins said:
I just think the comparison of selling a £35 video game and £4000+ car is silly. Two different markets, different revenues from the companies within the markets etc etc.
Click to expand...

The concept is exactly the same. Infact the biggest difference is that the value of the new sale a manufacturer loses out on is far higher in the car industry...
 
Nymins said:
I'm not saying you can't, I'm saying if you care about game developers you shouldn't.
Click to expand...
Why should I base my purchasing decision on what's good for a capitalist profit making company?

If something isn't working out for the company then they need to adapt to make it work; one way is perhaps by basing their revenue on subscriptions as well as software sales. If you take Activision-Blizzard as a good example then roughly a third of their revenue ($359m from $1.146bn total) in Q2 2011 was from online subscriptions, that's a healthy wedge to offset any worries from '2nd hand software sales'.

Like has been said about Game: adapt or die. If a software company doesn't like 2nd hand sales they need to do something differently (and by that I don't mean overly prohibitive copy protection/single use licensing that some PC publishers use)
 
Last edited:
[TW]Fox;21001281 said:
IMHO preowned isn't quite the new-sales cannibaliser people think is. I've not worked there for a few years now but certainly when I was there getting somebody to pay £34.99 for a preowned copy of Call of Fifa Woods 2011 against a new one at £39.99 was almost impossible. They took the new copy every single time. By far the biggest volume in preowned was the cheaper sub 20 quid stuff - games that were 2, 3, 4 and more years old.

Almost everyone, faced with a new release or a marginally cheaper used alternative, went new.
Click to expand...

That's because from 2010, they have had an online pass code system for sports games so it's cheaper to buy new.

I standby previous comments though if the game is excellent then the developers will make a fantastic living as many will be eager to buy in the first few weeks before any preowned copies surfaced, those who churn out poor games that was happening a lot in the cartridge days will be punished.

Piracy was a much bigger threat in the 90's than preowned ever was, you could by a game on a 99p cdr from a very overweight bloke who's mate could do clever things to your console with a soldering iron:eek:
 
I'm more surprised that people here didn't realise how damaging pre-owned sales can be on the gaming industry.

Its an argument that can't be won by either side. Google anything about the topic and a thread like this one will appear.
 
Maybe game / game station needs to close. This may intfact boost the stores that trade your pre-owned games and ensure the price is kept low. This is what we need.

Let the online / super markets handle the sales of consoles themselves. Also on that note the pre-owned consoles could also come in handy to drive down prices.

It makes perfect sense. Game is like the purple shirts. I think the purple shirts place should close down too and let the bigger stores / smaller stores handle everything.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom