One of the founders of Quantic Dream, Guillaume de Fondaumiere, has been discussing the impact of pre-owned copies of Heavy Rain, describing the pre-owned market as one of the main problems in the gaming industry.
“I can take just one example of Heavy Rain. We basically sold to date approximately two million units, we know from the trophy system that probably more than three million people bought this game and played it.
On my small level it’s a million people playing my game without giving me one cent. And my calculation is, as Quantic Dream, I lost between €5 and €10 million worth of royalties because of second hand gaming.”
Whilst it’s easy to sympathise with Quantic Dream when GAME, Tesco and many others can make millions by simply buying old games and placing them back on shelves, they would be foolish not to cash in. Second hand record, DVD and book shops have been running this business model for years.
The debate continues..
Source: GamesIndustry.Biz
grogy86
Maybe if he had pushed the dlc he would have got more money
Kevling
Definitely. They should have stuck with the original plan of multiple cases of DLC, rather than abandoning it for the Move patch. I wonder how many sales the Move patch generated? I imagine they might have seen a better return from people keeping hold of the game for extra DLC cases…
Kaminari
I dread the day when second-hand cars and flats will be considered “illegal”.
TSBonyman
There’s nothing to say that the extra million players were all pre-owned, many of those could have been people swapping games with their mates, or another sibling playing on their own account. I wouldn’t be surprised if half of all games purchased end up being re-sold or lent to others during their lifespan. It’s nothing new and it’ll continue while games are sold on storage media.
I think it would have been far better for Quantic Dream to look at how many copies of the DLC were sold, not the trophys.
Personally, i bought the Special Edition new and absolutely loved the game but at the time i could see how the gameplay might not appeal to a lot of gamers, so it was surprising they went on to sell 2 million copies. I think they did quite well out of it.
Of course if the PSN pass had been around then he wouldn’t be able to pick on the pre-owned market now…. but would the game have sold more copies?….I’m not so sure.
TSBonyman
In fairness to him he also said this..
“Now are games too expensive?” de Fondaumiere continued, “I’ve always said that games are probably too expensive so there’s probably a right level here to find, and we need to discuss this altogether and try to find a way to I would say reconcile consumer expectations, retail expectations, but also the expectations of the publisher and the developers to make this business a worthwhile business.”
Well said.
zb100
Cry me a river.
I don’t mind the game, but I don’t particularly love it.
I waited (unlike usual!) for it to drop in price & quite rightly, as the Move support eventually it worthwhile.
Launch a tip top game with very little/no patches & it’ll knock Zumba of the top of the pops straight off.
Rock on Eidos Montreal, rock on.
zb100
*off. My apologies.
beninGitis
all I gathered from this story is that videogame prices are too high. sixty dollars for a game most people play through once is not a reasonable price, and if they want to make more money, they should price games more appropriately.
MayContainEvil
I got this pre-owned, I found that beautiful special edition cover with the rain effects cheaper than a new copy.
That said, because I don’t like buying pre-owned I bought the dlc for it, which otherwise I probably wouldn’t have done and still haven’t played. I feel I have done my part for Quantic Dream, whatever this guy thinks.