Dead Man said:
Yeah, fair points, but you can buy a used car several years old and have everything working fine. Just because some cars have degraded does not mean all used cars have.
That's absolutely not true. If you buy a car that is a few years old, it might not need immediate repairs, but each part is closer to its end of life and the time-value of money dictates that repairs later are economically better for you than repairs sooner. That's why used cars keep being worth less and less. Tires only last so long, batteries only last so long, engines only last so long, chassis only take so long to rust.
There's an inverse correlation between mileage and price. Literally the exact same car that's the exact same age that looks the exact same and has the exact same parts and all parts appear to work will be worth substantially less if it has, for example, double the mileage.
Have you ever bought or sold a car?
This is not true for games because 99.9% of all consumers will never experience repair or replacement costs for any game they ever buy, especially since retailers refund games that require repairs and don't take trades of games that require repairs.
In Australia, EB (the same company as GS, I believe) sells games for less if they have no manual.
Fine, but it's moot anyway because even ascribing a fixed amount of value to the "physical" contents of the purchase, by far and away what you are buying is a digital good, which does not degrade. A disc is a disc is a disc. Some have scratches, but unless those scratches interfere with gameplay, they don't change the effective product you're buying. If those scratches interfere with gameplay, the product is instantly with nothing and not saleable.
Edit: Also, GS is not the only used retailer, and most people would expect to pay less with no manual. Or I could be wrong there, that is pure assumption on my part.
This is not the case in North America.
krazen said:
Stumpokapow id even argue that digital goods 'DO' degrade(at least with worth). With a sequel heavy and the 'newer is better' ideology of the videogame market, for the most part most games lose value over time; 60 bucks initially, after a period of time the vendor lowers the price to help move units after the initial rush and to compete with the newer games released since then (40 bucks) and then eventually a sequel gets released and the game is now worth a small amount of what it was initially.
Yes, absolutely, you're correct. I was aware of that but I was sort of intentionally avoiding referencing it because it's not the same eocnomic process. The value of games degrade. But it's not based on a degradation of the good, it's based on a degradation of the concept. This affects new games as well; Madden 06, brand new, sealed in package, has degraded in price the exact same way a copy of Madden 06 that's been sold and resold 100 times*
This is the distinction between physical and digital goods; physical goods degrade through use, digital goods don't degrade, although they may be valued less creatively.
Which brings to question: why are people so amped to sell a game that they've only had for a month?
It is weird when someone buys a game for $70 and trades it for $40 5 days later instead of doing a $10 rental, I'll admit. In Japan this is not an issue because rentals are illegal** and used copies often get >=80% of their value in trade credit, but in North America it really is kind of surreal.
*: Eventually sealed games spike in value for collectors, but that's a different market with a different equilibrium than the actual consumption market for games
**: Mostly, in the sense that there's no practical rental market for games.