I've been thinking about the whole "Used games are killing the industry"-mess again and although I'd agree that most publishers are a bunch of huge f*ckers trying to nickel and dime us for every piece of "extra" content, I think that a build-in mechanism preventing us from reselling our games could improve the current situation.
Don't get me wrong I'm neither on the side of the publishers nor on the side of gamestop. They brought this mess upon themselves by A) fixing the price for new retail games at 70 euro (~90 us dollar) thus making it literally impossible for most to buy more than one (non-used) game a month and B) gamestop not being willing to share their profits with the publishers.
But here's the thing: Let’s assume that if the next generation of consoles links game copies to your console-id or your account and thus prevents us from trading in. The publishers will still try to sell us those new games for 70 bucks at first. But no one will be able to trade in games and people will be short on money for gaming related stuff, so in the end most gamers will tend to only purchase "safe" titles (big franchises etc). But these titles do only come out once a year limiting publisher to just a handful of viable projects.
This sounds dire for us but also means less profit for them and so publishers will probably lower the price wall to allow the customer to take more risks with their purchases again. And this, THIS could make things better. Imagine games being sold for 40 bucks … that would be alright wouldn't it. Imagine also that the console-lock isn't as harsh as you think now, making games transferable or giftable. Wouldn't that be great as well?
Of course there is no guarantee for this to be the outcome. But at least I hope it will be. Fact is that something regarding used game sales will happen and I hope it will make things better for us the consumer in the end.
And no let the poo flinging begin because I am 100% sure that 80% of you guys won't agree with me.
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