Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Is the secondary video game market in trouble?

Rumors abound over the next generation of consoles about the used game market or the ability to lend or borrow games from friends. The question is do we own the physical copy of the game or are we renting it from the developers? I am of the opinion that my purchasing physical copy of a game or even a cd allows the me the right to lend/borrow or trade as I see fit. Capcom recently went through this with locked dlc on disk. The consumer backlash has since rectified this for all games going forward. The one thing I don't understand about this move is that it all seems to be about money getting back to the developer and yet if the rumors about one off codes for all games and a fee to unlock content on disk for another console or friend is true all I see is people spending less and less on video games. The secondary market allows for someone to trade a game they have finished and put that money towards a new game. So instead of the consumer paying 60 dollars for said new game it would maybe be 35 dollars and the publisher still gets full payment on that game. The consumer could then purchase more games per year. I see this new found iron fist on the secondary market as a bad thing that only hurts both the consumer and publishers/developers. The other side of this is that owning a console would lose the advantage of being a console and only become a cheaper pc.
For those of you thinking Microsoft is the only one thinking about doing this think about Sony and what is stopping them from implementing a similar system? The only way we as consumers can hold onto our rights is by voting with our wallets. Now if it comes out that neither Microsoft or Sony decide to implement this one off activation code then you the consumer win.

2 comments:

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  2. You can still trade in your game and get credit for it. That is not in dispute, is it? The developer and publisher only get paid for a new retail copy and not the traded in 35 dollar one. They will only see a percentage of that initial 60. If that copy is traded in and bought several times, no money goes to the creators. If gamestop would strike a profit sharing deal on all used games, that would be fine. This could concievably drive down the price of a new copy of a video game because they won't have so much to make up for.

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