deuce985 wrote...
I posted about this earlier. I think corporations like EA are making mistakes by claiming used games or rentals hurt the industry severely when they have no proven market research.
What about young people in the industry who started out by renting games or buying cheap games?
I'm not disputing used games/piracy/rentals hurt the industry in some way but I think it's overly exaggerated in some claims too.
Used games undoubtedly do cause some damage.
The issue is closely linked to an economic theory called price discrimination - charging different prices for the same product to different consumers, on the basis of their ability / willingness to pay. This wonderful piece of the marketing toolkit is why we have region-locked DVDs, so that comparatively high prices can be sustained in the US and Europe whilst offering cheaper products in emerging markets, but preventing people in the high-price region simply importing a DVD from the cheaper regions.
From a games perspective, the used games market operates at the lower end of the price scale - which is a good thing for players with less cash, because it means they can buy and play more games. Its also good for whoever is doing the selling - but its useless to the developer / publisher, who get virtually nothing from resales except, possibly, DLC.
Resales also potentially cut into the market for new games, because players who would otherwise buy the game new at full price, but who are willing to wait a month or two, will be able to pick it up at a discounted price at resale. One of the reasons game prices tend to drop after the initial period is that they're artificially high at launch to take advantage of people who want to be 'first movers' and are willing to pay a price premium to play the game ASAP. The price then tends to drop to avoid being completely out of step with the resales market and match / beat other games competing for the same audience.
Removing the resales market would put a fair chunk of control in the hands of the publishers again, giving them access to the types of price discrimination tools used in other markets. The financial losers would be the fans and anyone involved in selling games who isn't the publisher.
Realistically, that's only going to happen if either;
a) the publishers can strike a deal with the platform providers (which is why the XBox is intruiging, as Microsoft is not a particularly significant game-maker in the grand scheme of things in the way that Nintendo is)
If publishers can push the players to register online with a unique key and (preferably) always have to log in, then lock the key to that player's account so its more difficult / impossible to sell the game on. Take a quick look at BSN and Origin, and you can see EA moving steadily in this direction.
Broadly speaking, this is why Steam and Origin are so attractive to publishers - and why a lot of gamers either don't like them, or like them only because the price / deals are good, or because of the other features provided by the platform.
However, I agree with your point about research. The biggest fallacy in the logic is that people currently purchasing a fair amount in the used game market, or sharing games illegally, would purchase the same amount if those routes were no longer available. Some would, but the likely answer is that most would simply spend a similar amount of money on fewer games. Of course, its impossible to test this theory in a controlled fashion, so we'll never know if the evidence supports it - especially not since any any executive that spent a fortune on setting up something like Steam is destined to laud it as a fantastic success (unless he has a particular desire to experience unemployment first hand).
There's also the element that's been shown with music, that exposure for free leads to sales in the future. It works particularly well for lesser-known entities having their music shared, but is deeply unattractive to established bands (brands?) who already have high demand and so tend to suffer more from lost sales by having their music available for free than they gain from new listeners.
Modifié par Wozearly, 19 juin 2012 - 07:22 .
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