Codemasters CEO Rod Cousens has added his voice to the discussion of pre-owned games. Whilst he has not made an outright claim to a percentage of the revenue from the sales of pre-owned games he has used some rather flowery language which means practically the same thing;
“What cannot be underestimated is the impact of pre-owned software, which needs to provide a participatory benefit to creators if innovation is to prevail.” he said.
Mr. Cousens is suggesting that the second hand market will deny us games such as The Last Guardian or Flower, leaving gamers with yearly updates to established titles. It’s an interesting theory but perhaps the Codies CEO is underestimating the general public. Games such as Heavy Rain have exceeded sales expectations, and if we look at movies, the film ‘Inception’ which – shock horror – requires you to think, is number one in the box office across the globe.
Was the gaming world ready for Ico in 2001? Probably not, but if it was re-released this year I would suggest it would be a hit. Back in 2001 we wanted to kill things with laser guns, now many gamers are in the 30s and 40s and are willing to embrace something a bit different.
Perhaps it’s the games industry that needs to have a rethink. ‘Concept’ games such Heavy Rain, Braid and Flower have been huge hits whilst shooters such as Singularity have barely dented the charts. If publishers started taking the odd risk they may be pleasantly (and financially) surprised.
Source: MCV
jikomanzoku
Video gaming is an entertainment industry, if I buy a second hand book, DVD or CD it benefits the manufacturer in no way bar the raising of their profile, through reaching a new audience. If the product is good then I will be more inclined to buy that artist/author/directors next work on day 1 of release. The same is true of gaming.
Another nice thing about other entertainment forms, specifically CD’s and books is that I can “try out” the product by turning on the radio or standing in a bookshop for 10 minutes. So I very often know I’m gonna enjoy something before even purchasing it.
This isn’t always true of gaming and we don’t see nearly enough demo’s especially given that we’re asked to fork out upwards of £40 for each new title.
I buy a lot of games pre-owned that I would never bother with if I had to pay full whack as I’m just not sure they’re my “thing”. As a direct result I’m gonna be buying Dead Space 2 on launch day.
cc_star
there are loads of demos on Pc & 360 for some reason hardly any of them make their way on to the PS3… In addition to far more demos The 360 also has mandatory demos for all XBLA titles
hazelam
to say that preowned sales are destroying original titles and only the yearly franchises will be left is just bloody ridiculous, has that guy ever been into a games shop lately? most of the preowned titles are those bloody annual identikit games.
the quality original titles don’t tend to get traded like the identikit annual titles because they don’t have a new virtually identical version out every 12 months, or every 4 months in a world cup year, mind you this year we only had two, it was the last world cup where there were 3 fifa games out in a year.
when they stop remaking the same frakking games every frakking year preowned titles won’t be such a problem.
i bought half a dozen new games this year, and none of them were fucking fifa, or fucking call of duty or fucking smackdown, they were high qaulity titles that weren’t just rehashes of previous games with one new feature and a roster update, games like mass effect 2, final fantasy xiii, dragon age and white knight chronicles, quality titles that deserved my money.
but you go right ahead rod, add drm to your games, just be aware that would mean that i, and many others no doubt, will never buy them, not new anyway, maybe preowned.
so once again, drm will, as always, have the exact opposite of the desired effect.
if these publishers have a problem with preowned sales, they should go to the retailers, not fuck over the customer.
bunimomike
This is ludicrous. I buy second hand games because I can’t afford to buy new all of the time. However, I bought Red Dead Redemption new and then sold it for £30. Know where that money’s going? Towards another game! Shock, horror!
To digress for a moment, I’d like to see the prices tumble on the likes of MW2 so I can enjoy the single player at launch for £15 or £20 and then the multiplayer element be bought on the PSN for a tenner or so.
Question for people: Why is the pre-owned market impacting things now as oppose to the last twenty years or so?
djsunna
i think pubs and devs because they are spending far more money on their titles these days compared to say 10 or 15 years ago, they’re trying to point out it’s getting harder to turn a profit on the original investment these days and the pre-owned market is an area where they can milk some cash. they could charge more for brand new titles but then sales of those would drop and more people will turn to pre-owned as the affordable way to play games.