@iAmJohn said:
@Kidavenger said:
@iAmJohn said:
@MrAriscottle said:
@Chavtheworld said:
This is fucking terrible for software developers...
This.
How is it any more terrible for them than used books are for book publishers, or used cars are for car manufacturers, or used records are for the recording industry, or...
The prices of all those things have all been steadily rising while game prices have stayed the same (Nintendo prices have even gone down).
Digital goods don't degrade over time, a used digital game can be sold an infinite number of times and it never gets broken or lost.
Comparing the used car market to the used game market is the most idiotic comparison the internet ever came up with and it needs to stop.
- Game prices have stayed the same because they're already an expensive thing that was being sold at a way larger premium because of manufacturing hurdles (read: carts are fucking expensive to produce whereas printing DVDs and Blurays costs next to nothing). Additionally, the number of people playing games since the days of super expensive carts has grown exponentially, meaning a wider audience of people willing to pay those pretty significant prices; and that's not even counting the added revenue streams of subscription services and DLC. Saying that prices haven't increased suggests that the market conditions have stayed exactly the same for gaming and its audience; that's simply bullshit.
- What does degradation have to do with anything? You're talking like a businessman; your average consumer doesn't think in those terms. If I wanted to sell the copy of Pokemon Sapphire sitting on my coffee table, do you think I or anyone who was buying it would be thinking about the possibility of cartridge rot or the idea that one day this thing I own might not work? You might as well be making that really stupid anti-used game argument that you shouldn't be allowed to sell a physical copy of anything because there's no stopping whoever buys it used from reselling it.
- Would you care to justify how the used car and used game markets are so different or are you just going to be content with saying that it's wrong and I'm an idiot for making that comparison? If anything, I think my first point pretty clearly shows that the market for games is in a lot stronger position than the car market in general.
@jozzy said:
Because you can resell your kindle books? Your Itunes music? That's the discussion here.
Not even factoring the difference in cost between writing a book or making game, or how the music industry makes most of it's money from concerts and merchandise.
What's your point, that because I can't resell my rights to an eBook or an iTunes album that I shouldn't be allowed to? A law like this passing makes that possible and I'm all for it - why shouldn't I be allowed to sell something I bought and don't want anymore? It's mine, not theirs. Also, saying "the music industry makes most of its money from concerts and merchandise" is categorically wrong. Most artists do, that's correct, but the music industry, which is very much run by the record labels, still makes most of its money through - you guessed it! - selling albums and songs.
Well said stuff, iAmJohn.
Just to add a bit o the whole "used car analogy is bad, stop using it" point: It's not bad, in fact it's a business model that publishers should be -using-. Consider this -- Most used car sales come from lots owned by the companies that sell the -new- cars. For example, you can buy plenty of used cars at your local Honda dealership of all sorts of makes and models. They offer trade in deals to make the new cars more appealing to consumers, and then they get to make some more money reselling the used cars that were traded in (regardless of it was once a new car originally sold by them or not). You can trade in a Mercedes to that same Honda dealership, just fine, for example.
Now what if a publishing company ran with this sort of model -- accepting and reselling trade-ins like Gamestop, but essentially cutting out that middleman (or having a licensed middleman under their thumb, at the very least). They would have customers coming specifically for their new products as well as making money back reselling the trade-ins.
Perhaps they see this as too late in the game to invest in, but really, they should have been doing it to begin with. It's not the consumer's fault that they lacked the foresight or planning to incorporate a system that car companies have been using for decades, nor is it the consumer's fault that companies like Gamestop saw that opportunity and ran with it.
So yeah, the car analogy is kind of perfect in that it's the way that things -should- be handled by the publishers but hasn't been.
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