Be Excellent To Each Other

Quite an interesting thing.

Can we have special EKGaming editions that dispense with online fucking passes?

Of course not. These crumbs are not enough for EA. They want this AND online passes AND will shut your game down after.... phhh.... 12 months? If they feel that generous.

Any game with an online pass or other day-one pack-in DLC shouldn't get the 10% kickback. Instead, the kickback should be split between other pubs that don't use those features.

Interesting idea but I can imagine that the games industry will be snapping their hands off yet giving them nothing back.

Yep. I imagine EA will send the lawyers round every 6 hours to grab the pennies and kick a spastic on their way back out.

The thing is, EA wouldn't be satisfied with not getting the same treatment as everyone else (note: this policy only applies unless they stand to benefit from being different, ie: EA servers) and refuse to supply them with new stock.

This whole also sets a dangerous precedent. Hand-wringing neckbeards the world over will write gibberish emails to other shops demanding to know why they aren't following this example and how game developers deserve to stay in jobs while game retailers deserve to die in the streets.

\
You called?

Do the movie companies wail about second-hand DVD sales?

No. But it's different. DVDs are cheaper to start with, no high street stores have hyper-commercialised preowned DVDs, and people tend to hang on to films longer than games. So it's a much smaller piece of the market.

That, coupled with the "We'll pay you 30% extra for your second hand stuff" can only really mean higher prices, surely.



I can sort of agree with the first point, but can't at all with the second.

No. Game's margins on preowned are as much as 50%.

But if they are offering "trade in + 30% + 10% back to publishers", then that stuff is going to be more expensive to buy for the customer than a shop doing "trade in".

It can't be, it has to compete with existing preowned prices in Game and elsewhere. I think there's plenty of room in Game's huge pre-owned margins for a competitor to innovate.

If they match Game's price while cutting 10% of their own margin to give to devs, Game could just cut 10% of their margin and charge their customers 10% less, thus fucking EKGaming.

Why don't the moaning game companies/publishers go buy GAME or setup there own trade in shops if the're so bothered. *girly cry and stomps feet*

The same Game that was a millimetre from bankruptcy last week could afford to cut margins by 10%?

Cutting margains doesn't always mean losing money.

Well no, expecially if it drives sales. But this effort isn't aimed at sales revenue, it's aimed at getting the publishers off their back.

The publishers' feeling of entitlement is really beginning to grate on me. The industry has many tax incentives helping it, and they still want more.

It's almost as if they only exist to make money or something.

Yes. Also the same Game that isn't in competition with this US site but that you for some reason introduced to this debate

Crytek want pre-owned blocked on next gen consoles. Welcome to my cunt list, Crytek.

A couple of articles here and
here that might interest people.

Interesting. TBH I don't really mind if they do screw used sales so long as they accept the price adjustment that must go with it.

LOLOLOLOL

Yeah, of course they will.

The fact this guy actually thinks it's 'weird' that second hand sales are allowed is baffling and worrying, assuming he and people like him are genuinely being listened on the issue of course. He's either so genuinely stupid that he actually thinks the best comparison is to other software (when, of course, comparing games to other enterainment media like DVDs is better) or he knows it's a bad comparison but is disingenously referring to it in an effort to shape the discussion that way purely because it benefits him commercially. Either possibility is disheartening.

Opinion of one guy != formal commercial position of an entire company.

I don't reckon that they will sell as many copies of new games if people can't trade them in again, I don't see how they can. So the response might well be to lower the prices a bit. This must be part of the reason why PC games are invariably the cheapest version of cross-platform releases isn't it?

I thought console games were more expensive because the publishers had to pay a licence fee to MS/Sony.

Allow me to switch on my Supah Boffo Psychic Powahs to bring you THE HEADLINES OF TOMORROW LAND *lightning crashes*

Depending on how you look at it, games are insanely cheap. Say you bought Street Fighter 2 in 1992 for you SNES. No-one pays full whack for games, so you didn't pay £65 (or whatever horrific amount it was), you paid £40. Adjusted for inflation, that would be £67.60. We pay, what, half that, for games costing around twenty times as much to produce. Bargain.

A Codemasters budget tape at £3.99 would be £6.74, or roughly 550 MS points

[edit]I'm aware that Street Fighter 2 is a bad example, but it's the only one I knew the price of.

Oh yes, indeed. But you're preaching to the converted. I almost buy all of my games sealed and brand-new. I have no real issue dropping ~£40 on a new release if it's something I've been anticipating for a while (I don't do it often, though). I fully appreciate gaming has never been better value for money.

An interesting thing from one of the articles was that the average person only buys 9 new games over the console's lifetime, which is two and a bit a year. With the average game coming in at 8 hours, that's not a lot of gaming (70 hours, or 12 minutes a day for a year). The extra must come from somewhere, and, I guess, until publishers realise that it's quite the crowded marketplace, and with low rates of people buying new games, their's had better shape up well against whatever else is out in those six months if they want to sell it full price. So, I asusme that price cuts, rentals and second hand stuff fills the void. Maybe if publishers made games longer, the churn rate would drop off somewhat (it's perectly feasible to finish CoDs in an evening, although I realise the multiplayer is what it is primarily for, and why I don't see as many in the second hand bins), and, dare I sya it, better, then they wouldn't be in this position.

9 new games over a consoles lifetime? Wow.. why buy the console in the first place? That seems a massive waste.

I've bought less than that. I'll tot it up when I get home, but well over half of my games (I think) were less than £10 second hand, and the new ones (CoDs, Skyrim, Red Dead, orange Box) presents.

EDIT: Sorry, yeah, I've beaten this drum before.

I recall Conker's Bad Fur Day on the N64 selling for about £59.99. I paid less for my brand new N64 than that (remember Beatties? They had a closing down sale and sold off their N64s for £45) and rightly scoffed at it.

The only games I remember being super expensive in CANANADADA were Virtua Racing on the Genesis (because of the SVP chip) and also SNES games generally costing £5-10 more than their Genesis equivalent. No idea why, but I had a friend with a SNES who paid outrageous prices for stuff like Street Fighter and Desert Strike and his parents weren't happy with him.

This incessant whinging by developers and publishers has caused me to change my position on the issue. I no longer think they can fuck off.

I think they can fuck the fuck off.

EA are already hiring people to patrol every car boot sale in the country just in case a piece of their holy property is for sale.

To counter the SF2 argument, the SNES sold 50 million consoles worldwide. The PS3 has sold 62m, the XBox 360 65m and the Wii 94m.

All from Wiki, mind. (And fucking hell, the PSP sold 70 million? How did that happen?)

Waves special EA Car Park Pass.

I'm probably getting confused, but what argument is it countering?

Sorry about this, but my publicist informs me that's an out of date statement. No idea how it could have happened, etc and so on. Anyway, onto the meat of it.

I think they can fuck the fucking fuck off.

Sorry sir, but you didn't keep up the hourly payments for your card and it has expired. You will now have your forehead branded with the EA logo to serve as a permanent reminder and also living flesh billboard. Unless the payments resume, we will be forced to affix an electronic voicebox that repeats "E. A. Sports. It's in the game." in a semi-petulant American accent every 5 seconds for the rest of your life.

My bro really likes Call of Duty, and plays little else.

I imagine he is far from alone in his gaming habits.

It's only a bargain if their games are worth playing... there's a reason I've not played on the xbox for months.

Similar to my brother-in-law. A football game, a racing game, a couple of shooting games, and that's it.

Somewhat related: Publishers don't want 50 digital retailers!

Indeed not, they wouldn't be able to control the prices with too much competition.

I know of at least four people in work who play nothing except CoD on their consoles (PS3s all of them, I think). One has slightly broadened his interests to include Dark Souls.

...

I think I just heard Dimrill's wail from here.

Yeah. His brother, for a start.