ShinUltramanJ said:

My local Gamestops doesn't force used games on me ever. Funny how the one thing gamers bitch about most with Gamestop is being pestered to preorder NEW GAMES.

But keep drinking the Kool Aid man! Used game sales have been around since the NES era, and even further back if you consider people selling their old Colecovision/Atari/Intellivision/Odyssey games at yard sales.

Gotta stop those gamers from trying to save money so Cliffy can buy another Ferrari.

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And my EB Games makes sure I dont wanna get whatever game used for however much cheaper like everytime. Again anecdotes are worthless.

Dead Man said:

I think you may have missed the point a bit too. The app store etc are not all priced at what many people consider more than the product is worth. Used products are not unfair competition, they are a fact of life in a capitalst system.

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I probably should have put "unfair" in quotation marks because I was talking about the perception of competition from the publisher's standpoint, not as an actual concrete statement of fact.

To be a bit more specific: I'm talking about "Unfairness" perceived in the sense that because resales will always be pitched at a lower-price point than new (thanks to the way inventory is sourced), they can't ever directly compete on price. Which is a pretty damaging thing in a free market.

From the publisher's standpoint, all they can do is modify the nature of the product in order to give new a decisive competitive advantage against used, or shift to a mode of distribution that effectively makes the point moot.

Either way, used sales are an undeniable force within the retail gaming market. Used games directly compete with new product for consumer spending, and as such must be factored into publishers business models.

You can argue about "consumer rights" all you want, but its not going to change a damn thing. Business must respond to competition and so while that stimulus is there you are inevitably going to see a reaction.

iamshadowlark said:

And my EB Games makes sure I dont wanna get whatever game used for however much cheaper like everytime. Again anecdotes are worthless.

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You claimed that employees are trained to push the sale of a used game over a new game. Do you have any proof to back this up?
As I've said, NONE of the employees at my local Gamestops (plural) push used over new.

I guess just my local guys aren't following this supposed training?

ShinUltramanJ said:

You claimed that employees are trained to push the sale of a used game over a new game. Do you have any proof to back this up?
As I've said, NONE of the employees at my local Gamestops (plural) push used over new.

I guess just my local guys aren't following this supposed training?

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Well I got a friend that works there and he has told me alot of shit regarding gamestop and their policies. So no not much proof. Maybe it varies by regions? IDK but I know what I've been told.

iamshadowlark said:

No the fuck we don't lol. There is nothing Leondexter posted that proves his statement true. Absolutely nothing. All we have is him and you providing baseless anecdotes that are entirely worthless considering how large the game industry is. The only thing his statement means that the sales that they might get from those customers will disappear. Theres no way you, him or anybody else can say that there wouldn't be new sales to take their place.

sorry

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All else being equal, where are all these additional sales supposed to be coming from, exactly? You're talking about a scenario where consumers won't be able to recoup part of the cost of games they're no longer interested in. So the stakes become higher, but people will somehow become less risk-averse? You're going to conveniently assume that their entertainment budgets are infinitely malleable, despite numerous statements to the effect that the trade-in cycle is the only thing that enables some people to keep up on new releases and without it, they'd buy less games? Or that sales and price cuts are a viable substitute, despite the fact that these are typically applied to older titles while the industry pushes hard to get consumers to buy day one? (The implicit understanding being that the longer you wait, the less worthwhile the experience is going to be, especially with games that have an online component/community - and like it or not, that's more and more games nowadays.) Is the only way to actually get you to acknowledge the validity of these peoples' statements to conduct a poll and present you with percentages, or would you dismiss that as anecdotal evidence as well? At this point, I suspect you would.

There's no way you, him, or anybody else can say that a supermassive asteroid impact won't obliterate all life on Earth tomorrow, either. But based on the evidence we have, the chance of this occurring is so vanishingly small as to be meaningless. IMO, the same holds true here - with what we know about consumer spending habits in this space, there's nothing to suggest that there would be a sudden uptick in new game purchases across the board to compensate for the loss you'd see, and everything to suggest that there wouldn't.

I think the evidence here is pretty clear-cut. We can extrapolate from the data we have with a high degree of certainty. If you want to keep telling yourself that eliminating used game sales wouldn't have a negative impact on the sale of new releases in the face of all we know, more power to you. Personally, it strikes me as denial.

Vinci said:

I've asked this before but I will ask it again: Why are publishers more concerned about used game sales from the revenue standpoint than they are the fact that people are getting rid of their games within such a short period of time? You know, since that is a part of the whole used games equation that they can, in some sense, control.

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There are several hypotheses:

1) They don't realize it because they're not business-savvy enough to ask that question. They care but they can't come up with a solution.
2) The people who hold the power at these companies might have a certain idea of what makes a game good and/or want to make games they themselves like rather than caring solely about customers; in other words, they're not customer-oriented, they don't believe that what they're doing is business first and foremost.
3) They're avoiding the question because it would hurt their sense of pride and shatter their world view.


As for what I believe:

1) Possible for smaller developers I guess. For incumbents such as Activision, Ubisoft and SEGA? Hell naw, they know business., they know what they're doing. At best they just don't know how to break their business model of front-loaded sales and thriving used sales market without floundering.
2) Much more likely. Many people in the business are gamers themselves and have encouraged the "bigger, better, more like Hollywood" way for generations. They want those games to dominate.
3) Also this. When you invest that much energy and money into something it's hard to look at it with a critical eye. It's never easy to admit you "done goofed".


Virtually every single criterion and feature which would go towards adding long term value to customers goes against the way most big publishers and developers have done things: accessibility, emphasis on social interaction and family fun (i.e. local multiplayer), lower base price (as a whole), you name it. Online multiplayer is the only value they've embraced that can continually provide value.

iamshadowlark said:

Well I got a friend that works there and he has told me alot of shit regarding gamestop and their policies. So no not much proof. Maybe it varies by regions? IDK but I know what I've been told.

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GET THE FUCK OUT WITH YOUR BASELESS WORTHLESS ANECDOTES

ShinUltramanJ said:

My local Gamestops doesn't force used games on me ever. Funny how the one thing gamers bitch about most with Gamestop is being pestered to preorder NEW GAMES.

But keep drinking the Kool Aid man! Used game sales have been around since the NES era, and even further back if you consider people selling their old Colecovision/Atari/Intellivision/Odyssey games at yard sales.

Gotta stop those gamers from trying to save money so Cliffy can buy another Ferrari.

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I was just thinking about this the other day. Every time Ive called GameStop I've heard "Thank you for calling game stop where you can pre order xyz." Everytime I buy something from game stop I'm asked at the register if I want to pre order game X. Matter fact the day 1 pre order midnight launch craze was started by game stop. They're still pretty much the only retailer where you buy a game at 12:01 on release date. But yeah, GameStop is evil and only want to sell used games.

iamshadowlark said:

This was in the OP of this thread and I already pointed out the fallacies and flaws of it.

And again, no data has ever been brought out because it hasn't been made available to the public.

Try again when you come back.

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"No data"? There is data there. And elsewhere, if you care to find it. But it's much the same, and we really only need to know one thing: the majority of the credit Gamestop issues for trade-ins goes directly towards new games, particularly pre-orders.

Your rebuttal is little more sophisticated than saying "I don't believe it". And your assumption that any information not publicly disclosed automatically favors you is hilarious. You sound like the morons who thought Obama isn't a citizen because he wouldn't produce a birth certificate. And I'm sure, upon release of more data, your response would still be "I don't believe it".

iamshadowlark said:

Do you have data to refute this?

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.....exactly.

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Lol so your entire argument is " can you prove the shit I'm making up ISN'T true?! Hahah I win!"

Classic.