Is Gamestop really to blame ?

[Requia]

Please actually read my posts before responding.

Now I'm even more confused, why did you respond to me saying 'you can't do this' with a post that said 'I disagree. You can't do this?' Did you think I meant that legally it was impossible? Because I was talking about practical

You asked **why** it hadn't already happened, I discussed why in the original post, I even bolded it for you the second time.

 

[J Tyran]

So let me get this straight...you are blaming Gamestop for people trading in games?

You can certainly blame companies like GameStop for telling consumers that come to the desk with a new copy of a game "hey why don't you get used one instead?" though.

 

[Negatempest]

What Microsoft and Sony are not telling you is that Gamestop/EB games have existed since the ps1 existed. So if gamestop is "responisble" for Microsoft's choices than Gamestop is also the reason the ps2 library is so big and varied....oh wait gamestop isn't responsible for that.

Fact IS you can go way back to Microsoft's past and see so much BS "**** the customer" practices that seeing and hearing Microsoft blame used games for their not so new "**** the customer" practice it is just not that surprising. What is funny is seeing "loyal" customers back this up. Kinda sad really.

Long story short, Microsoft has been screwing over customer rights for years prior to the xbox and it should never be just accepted and should always be challenged.

 

[Colt47]

My hypothesis on the route the game industry has taken in the western world is that publishers have decided the easiest way to make money is to depend on front loaded sales models powered by marketing, so they have been green lighting projects like Remember Me, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, etc, that are linear and don't have as much replay-ability as older games in previous eras, but have a strong "cinema" style flavor. The early adopters buy the game, play through it in a week, and then go and get money back from GameStop or Best Buy. Then the next consumer comes in and picks up the "like new" game since it is slightly cheaper and still has all the books intact.

Then the publisher gets angry because for some reason there is this sudden surge of used copies of their purposely engineered short lived cinema game, and are throwing tantrums because "consumers shouldn't be able to do that to me!"

My answer to the publishers: Then don't publish games that perpetuate a model you don't want? It's not like there are a whole lot of people turning in copies of Skyrim: Some people are on their 10+ playthrough on that. Also it seems like publishers haven't realized that the preorder model looks good on paper, but is designed to work against them and for the used game economy, since people are more likely to turn in a preordered game to a store than a game they had the chance to rent or see for themselves via some other means.

 

[Colt47]

In contrast, look at Nintendo. They have never complained about used games, and they published the ten best selling games ever.

as of summer of last year they had 3 of the top 10, Actilizard has more.

1. Over $10 billion ? "World of Warcraft" (2004)
2. $1.5 billion? "Call of Duty: Black Ops" (2010)
3. $1.4 billion ? "Mario Kart" for Wii (2008)
4. $1.35 billion ? "Grand Theft Auto 4" (2008)
5. $1.25 billion ? "Wii Play" (2006)
6. $1.2 billion ? "New Super Mario Bros" (2006)
7. $850 million ? "Gran Turismo 3" (2001)
8. $780 million ? "Modern Warfare 2" (2009)
9. $740 million ? "The Sims" (2000)
10. $700 million ? "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare" (2007)

And one of those they just got because they sold so many systems that came with it.

Where did you get these figures? I got mine from vgchartz.
http://www.vgchartz.com/gamedb/
Ah, I have found that I am wrong. Those charts do not combine sales on all platforms. Adjusting for that, "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3" is in the number 6 spot. So there is at least one game in the top ten that Nintendo didn't publish,

Eh, your point still stands, though. Nintendo games tend to have good replay value, so people keep them longer and don't often turn them in to used game stores until much further from the launch date. Really can't say the same for Tomb Raider, Uncharted, Bioshock Infinite, etc.

 

[MetalDooley]

Take a hard look at gamestop, most of their revenues come from used games that *deny* the publisher any profits.

You realise that the profit margin on new games is ridiculously low right?It's been estimated that retailers make between $2-$4 profit on every new sale so it's no wonder that places like Gamestop push used sales so heavily.Maybe if publishers weren't being so greedy to begin with then GS would promote new sales more

Don't get me wrong I don't particularly like GS but publishers have had a big hand in creating this problem for themselves

 

[Lovely Mixture]

I don't see how Gamestop is the problem.
People would do this anyway, Gamestop is merely an outlet. If people sold their games on ebay, wouldn't that be the same thing?

I don't pay full price for games unless
1. They're under $40 and look to have good replay value.
2. I'm really excited and/or it's part of a pre-established series

My friend bought me a used copy of Dark Souls. I liked it so much that I bought the PC version to support the developer and get it on another platform, and I'm going to get Dark Souls II. I'm pre-ordering Dragon's Crown because I like the director's style of games.

I am critical of Gamestop for things, but the used game market is not one of them. I don't see how giving your custoe

The Xbox One just exacerbates the problems that can occur with consoles (the PS4 does as well, but less so).

Is Gamestop to blame for why MS(and possibly Sony) are implementing used games DRM

Sony has flat out said that they won't do that.

 

[Colt47]

I don't see how Gamestop is the problem.
People would do this anyway, Gamestop is merely an outlet. If people sold their games on ebay, wouldn't that be the same thing?

I don't pay full price for games unless
1. They're under $40 and look to have good replay value.
2. I'm really excited and/or it's part of a pre-established series

My friend bought me a used copy of Dark Souls. I liked it so much that I bought the PC version to support the developer and get it on another platform, and I'm going to get Dark Souls II. I'm pre-ordering Dragon's Crown because I like the director's style of games.

I am critical of Gamestop for things, but the used game market is not one of them.

The Xbox One just exacerbates the problems that can occur with consoles (the PS4 does as well, but less so).

If anything the used game market is more of a reaction to publishers trying to expand the audience for game titles to people who have little to no interest in certain genres of games. The only thing GameStop is guilty of is exacerbating the issue via blind faith pre-sales in order to expand their profit margins (and with the X-box One, attempting to kill off E-bay and Amazon used game sales by forcing a bar code scanner scheme to detach titles from peoples Xbone accounts.)

 

[Lovely Mixture]

If anything the used game market is more of a reaction to publishers trying to expand the audience for game titles to people who have little to no interest in certain genres of games. The only thing GameStop is guilty of is exacerbating the issue via blind faith pre-sales in order to expand their profit margins (and with the X-box One, attempting to kill off E-bay and Amazon used game sales by forcing a bar code scanner scheme to detach titles from peoples Xbone accounts.)

Could you explain your points with a little more depth? I think I understand, but I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything.

 

[Snotnarok]

Of course not, it's more to do with the industry unwillingness to change, they see how well games sell when there are frequent sales or games priced to their value but instead for console releases it's 60 dollars no matter what. Even if we know the game is unfinished,barely playable we gotta reel in that sucker quota to make back our money!
But no it's actually used games fault, because people buy it used because they don't understand we don't make money when they buy used (they found out the game wasn't great and wanted to save money any try the game out).

They would rather make sure the price stays at 60 bucks, charge for content on disc, put HORRIBLE DRM that gives pirates the better deal than actually try and fix the problem at hand when the answer is right there.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

In the end, one view is that Gamestop and other retailer can hardly turn a profit with the 10 dollars they get from a new sale (in Australia), so they turn to used games because the margins are larger. The other is that Gamestop has, unprovoked, decided to aggressively market used games over new ones and is pressuring publishers and developers into all the shit we accuse them of pioneering. Either way, as a consumer I should be allowed to resell something I buy, $120 is a ridiculous price for a new game, and used games have funded new purchases in the past and do so for a significant amount of people.

I'm inclined to believe the former, because 1. I haven't seen any retailer aggressively marketing used games over new ones in Australia, 2. instead of developing online distribution services with lower prices than retailers and/or not doing business with them, publishers continuously support retailers, and 3. Publishers have had opportunities to lower prices before and they haven't. Even in digital distribution, where as far as I know there is no way to resell your games.

 

[absulute]

He looks like that one guy Francis.

 

[TheRookie8]

Lol.....


Gamestop isn't to blame. It's called greed,corporate America, and the almighty dollar.

Selective criticisms and hasty generalizations are such wonderful tools...like trying to untangle a ball of yarn with a spoon and a fire ax.

 

[Aris Khandr]

2. instead of developing online distribution services with lower prices than retailers and/or not doing business with them, publishers continuously support retailers, and 3. Publishers have had opportunities to lower prices before and they haven't. Even in digital distribution, where as far as I know there is no way to resell your games.

The fact is that we are not yet at the point where the publishers can survive without retail. We're getting there, but we're a generation or two away from it being possible. High speed, high data cap internet connections are still relatively uncommon in many parts of the world. So both of those points are simply unworkable. Even knowing that there are still many people who won't/can't buy digital, Gamestop knows that it is a losing plan to sell a game for $60 in their store while digital platforms are selling the same game for 1/2 to 2/3 of that. The same gamers who buy used to save $5 will make the jump to digital games to save $20 and never look back. So retail stores will actually refuse to sell the physical games if the digital store is undercutting them. Going back to my first sentence, we're not at the point where gaming can go digital only, so publishers are over a barrel. They can't tell Gamestop to sod off, so they make do and bide their time. However, do not mistake that for being in any way happy to do business with them. Given the choice, I'm sure that they'd be overjoyed to go entirely digital and shut out the retail stores and used game markets entirely. From both an infrastructure and consumer standpoint, though, we're just not there yet. And Gamestop remains a necessary evil.

 

[Colt47]

If anything the used game market is more of a reaction to publishers trying to expand the audience for game titles to people who have little to no interest in certain genres of games. The only thing GameStop is guilty of is exacerbating the issue via blind faith pre-sales in order to expand their profit margins (and with the X-box One, attempting to kill off E-bay and Amazon used game sales by forcing a bar code scanner scheme to detach titles from peoples Xbone accounts.)

Could you explain your points with a little more depth? I think I understand, but I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything.

Sure. Back around mid 2000s when the ps3 and the Xbox 360 were still fairly new, publishers were releasing a large number of games that were designed to appeal to what was supposed to be an ever increasing audience pool. The problem was that while they made the games more accessible they also became a whole lot easier to play through. Furthermore, a good portion of the supposed target audience the games were supposed to attract ended up either not having significant interest in the games or flat out disliked them, so they ended up returning the games to the stores for trade in credit to reduce the financial blow.

Needless to say, this fueled the supply of used games required to maintain GameStop and allowed the company to expand relentlessly across the states. In fact, the impact of it was so great that now even Amazon and Best Buy are involved in the trade in business, since they know they can make more money off of the huge supply of consumer rejected and completed games.

Before this point, the used games market did exist, but it wasn't anywhere near as prolific since the pool of used games was formed mostly from people moving to new systems and trading in old ones. Sure, it was annoying to some publishers as a competing source of cheap entertainment, but it didn't directly compete with new titles: That was primarily their gripe with the rental industry that was beginning to head into a decline.

Edit: Fast forward to the current state of affairs, consoles and publishers are now trying to combat a beast they created from their over bloated marketing budgets and the developers failed experimentation of creating a vast "movie goer" audience, while kickstarter and indies are taking over the hole that got left in the wake of the entire mess. Basically, everyone in the industry seems to be somewhat near sighted on the whole affair.

Edit2: Dang, Jim just covered this partly in his video this week talking about focus groups.