Ethics of trade-in/second hand

flat-6

flat-6

flat-6

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So - should we be feeling guilty buying/selling second hand? Is this killing the games industry? Heavy Rain devs reckon they didn't receive any revenue from 1/3rd of the total players of the game. Is that ok?

Frankly I am amazed the highstreet chains get away with selling pre-owned for more than the new online price, but they're dropping like flies despite shady practices like this.
 
as Nitefly says, it's not shady, but i do agree with you to an extent, the 2nd hand market does take away from gaming developers as a whole.

Trouble is, taking away the 2nd hand market, banning it, it's just not going to happen, people won't sit up and take notice until the last gaming devs start hanging up their coats to find a new vocation and no more games are made period :(
 
SeraphX said:
the 2nd hand market does take away from gaming developers as a whole.
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I'm not convinced. I have a set amount of disposible incoming, and only a small portion is ever going to go to the developers. With a second hand market, my cash is enabling, typically, some-one else to pay the money for new games. Without it, I would buy less games, but probably spend the same. I suspect its the same for the person buying new, they only have a set amount they will spend, and they top this up by selling off their old games. I don't see how restricting 2nd hand sales is going to get more money to the developers, I'm not going to spend more, I'd just buy less.
 
the only way to stop it is to have a serial with every game that you have to type into the console to then download something from the marketplace which installs on your system saying that this game can be played on this system.

then the developers can sell these serials on the marketplace for £10 each.

EA already do this with "online passes" but it doesn't stop offline gaming.

so basically they need the same thing for offline, but that would mean from now on "internet" on a console is mandatory not an option.

i could see that being a problem for a lot of users who simply play offline only.

it's swings and roundabouts, i doubt it makes any difference tbh, as if there was no 2nd hand market, i doubt many more games would be sold. but they would alienate a lot of their user base. by allowing someone to buy 2nd hand for cheap and playing their game, effectively that player could really like the game so much he buys the next one at launch brand new.

therefore it makes no difference imo. developers just need to start producing higher quality games, of course they are going to blame everyone else before looking in the mirror.
 
If a developer is going to sell off keys for £10 to claw back at falling sales, surely there would be nothing wrong with downloading the game off certain sites then paying the £10? If that's the case then why bother with retail sales at all and just have the whole system as DLC. Kill off retail alltogether.

Why not just drop the RRP of the game a few months after release to drive down the price of trading in, cash in on those who want the game at release then make up sales a few months in on those who might buy it if it was cheaper while there's still some hype surrounding the game.

What I really miss is demos and I don't want to spend £20-40 on a game without knowing if I'd actually enjoy it or not.
 
Steeps said:
If a developer is going to sell off keys for £10 to claw back at falling sales, surely there would be nothing wrong with downloading the game off certain sites then paying the £10? If that's the case then why bother with retail sales at all and just have the whole system as DLC. Kill off retail alltogether.

Why not just drop the RRP of the game a few months after release to drive down the price of trading in, cash in on those who want the game at release then make up sales a few months in on those who might buy it if it was cheaper while there's still some hype surrounding the game.

What I really miss is demos and I don't want to spend £20-40 on a game without knowing if I'd actually enjoy it or not.
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rent them?

i see DLC being the future tbh, effectively killing off hard copies of anything. also it effectively kills of piracy too i would imagine if the system was implemented properly.
 
Surely next gen stuff won't bother with physical distribution at all? Where's the downside for devs? Near perfect copy-protection and no resale.
 
flat-6 said:
Surely next gen stuff won't bother with physical distribution at all? Where's the downside for devs? Near perfect copy-protection and no resale.
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not everyone has broadband ;) or even internet for that matter and like to play offline.

also some people have monthly limitations, etc. FUP, some of these games rack up huge GB's of data.
 
flat-6 said:
Surely next gen stuff won't bother with physical distribution at all? Where's the downside for devs? Near perfect copy-protection and no resale.
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Nationwide download speed is no where near enough for 100% digital distribution yet.
 
flat-6 said:
Surely next gen stuff won't bother with physical distribution at all? Where's the downside for devs? Near perfect copy-protection and no resale.
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A purely download only infrastructure wont work. Physical media will be around for a long time.

1. Current English broadband is capped, throttled and just generally backwards compared to most the world

2. See 1.

3. Not all the world has broadband in place atall.

^^ what they said too
 
Second hands games can be benefitcial, for example, I bought C&C Tiberium Wars for £4.99 second hand, I bought the expansion pack, Kane's Wrath from Steam, thus they benefitted
 
Strife212 said:
PC Gaming is already like that, half the games you buy you can't play until you activate them online on steam anyway.
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basically consoles are like PC's but 5 years behind in most cases. it will slowly get there, i expect them to be a lot similar to PC's in the next gen but still lagging behind, also the above system is already in place for all EA games, you cant use them online without a pass, i think the same for all COD games too.
 
Jay794 said:
Second hands games can be benefitcial, for example, I bought C&C Tiberium Wars for £4.99 second hand, I bought the expansion pack, Kane's Wrath from Steam, thus they benefitted
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yup already covered this above as well, and since you like the game so much their is a higher chance of you buying the newest one when it comes out brand new, etc.

it's swing and roundabouts as said before developers just need to focus on the games, stop blaming others for their sales not being good enough.
 
I reckon we'll see the next generation consoles at least start doing digital downloads, like Steam is right now, where you can still buy a physical copy, but it'll have a CD key that will allow you to at least play online.

While I don't really like it, I think that we'll all end up having to own every game. It would be nice to see if they can build in a game rental service integrated in to Xbox Live / PSN properly, but that'll require constant internet connection.
 
DaveyD said:
I reckon we'll see the next generation consoles at least start doing digital downloads, like Steam is right now, where you can still buy a physical copy, but it'll have a CD key that will allow you to at least play online.

While I don't really like it, I think that we'll all end up having to own every game. It would be nice to see if they can build in a game rental service integrated in to Xbox Live / PSN properly, but that'll require constant internet connection.
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they have had digital downloads for years, on PSN anyway warhawk was one of them and that was a launch game which became a digital download shortly after, and it is also on 360 now, you can download full games.

if the current consoles (360 and PS3) are third gen due to them being the first set to start using discs over other media like cartidges, i expect to see discs being phased out in the 5th gen, so not next gen but the one after that, so say in 8-10 years time.

that seems logical to me.
 
I know you can get them now, but I'm thinking more tying in your physical copy to your account, so once you've bought and installed it, you basically are free to play it without the disc.
 
DaveyD said:
I know you can get them now, but I'm thinking more tying in your physical copy to your account, so once you've bought and installed it, you basically are free to play it without the disc.
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i doubt you could do that next gen, hard drives are not big enough, say you have 40 games over the life of a console, say on average the game is 20GB in size, that is 800GB.

you could do it if they had 3.5" hard drives but then they need to make the consoles a lot bigger, with that in mind, i dont see it happening next gen.

we will need to see 2.5" 2TB hard drives for around £75 before that became a real option.

what would work is what i said, you need a pass to use the game on that console which you get with the game, but that requires an internet connection to enable, but that could alienate a lot of people who dont have internet.

anyway all of these would only prohibit the 2nd hand market, it still wouldnt increase sales imo, the developers just need to make better games.
 
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