Because manufacturers in every other industry accept the fact that once a consumer purchases their product, it's theirs. That person can then turn around and lend it out, resell it, give it away, or whatever, and they're not obligated to give the manufacturer a single penny. Which is as it should be.
Only in the videogame industry do you see companies fighting tooth and nail to deny consumers ownership of the things they buy. Worse yet, they honestly seem to believe they're entitled to a cut of any secondhand transactions - that somehow, videogames are more deserving than any other product that gets bought and sold secondhand, be it cars, books, clothes, or whatever. As much as I love games, they're not inherently special in that regard.
As a consumer this is spot on, legally and morally. I can see where EA, for example would want to see Gamestop go away, but that's just tough really.
Games, cars, books and houses are different. However the differences don't give companies a moral or logical justification to be entitled to a cut of sales after the initial point of sale. Since a company cannot demand this we have what we have now where parts of games which were already included in the initial point of sale are siphoned off as seperate products (multiplayer and day 1 dlc).
If someone asks you why devs are implementing these things it's not because of the differences. It's because the used market is getting out of hand. Having said that I believe EA and maybe some Sony exclusive games are the only vocal ones in doing this since the latter part of last year.
Another point is that charging for multiplayer directly devalues Xbox Live subscriptions. The status quo was that you buy a game and xbox Live would cover that mulitplayer experience amongst other things whether or not the game is bought used or new. Now all these additional $10 fees are coming up for a segment of the gaming population that pay for Live. Obviously Microsoft should be looking carefully into this.
Could it be this is why the big companies with leverage such as EA are very vocal in doing this anyway. Sony are also keen to devalue xbox Live I would assume so they have an additional motive to support this in their exclusive games. If they get the ball rolling and more companies jump on board with these practices this move hurts Live users more than PSN users, if you're going down, do as much damage as possible I say. ^^
GuitarAtomik said:
I don't think devs/pubs care about the the used sales of games from last gen.
Oh definitely. Arguably more to the point regarding the concept of "wear and tear". Games are not affected by wear and tear up to the point where the exclusive hardware to play games on is still manufactured. Once the hardware cannot be bought new anymore you have a problem since he game is tied to the hardware. The devalues the software even more.
Since things like Online Passes are relevant when the generation and it's hardware is still very active, you can say it doesn't really matter and I would agree, but I am highlighting "wear and tear" still exists for games and affects their value over time.
About Chrono Trigger, I don't know maybe ppl put value in it as a collectors item or something, but that's normal for rare items to increase in value.