CLOUD GAMING EUROPE: Gaikai CEO says high street schemes make download business even more attractive
Game publishing and development firms are finding sanctuary in digital distribution platforms because boxed retail is aggressively perusing pre-owned sales schemes, industry veteran David Perry has said.
Speaking today at the Cloud Gaming Europe event in London, Perry said “companies like Gamestop are getting so good at selling used games, getting better and better at squeezing revenues, that they are encouraging publishers to go digital.”
Pre-owned has long been a divisive subject in the games business. Retailers, which take all profits from selling second-hand games, say they are an essential business pillar. Publishers and developers, who make nothing from such trades, say the practice hurts revenues.
Andrew Oliver, the co-founder of Blitz Games Studios, last year went as far as saying that the significant pre-owned businesses was a bigger problem than content piracy.
Speaking at a packed conference hall at Cloud Gaming Europe, Perry told attendees that digital distribution has become the logical destination for publishers as the stakes get higher and the margins tighter.
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And he believes retail knows it. He said that GameStop is now taking digital distribution very seriously, acquiring net-based vendors such as Kongregate.
Oh come on! Devs now make games that can be completed in 5 mins, or have rushed them out full of glitches! If the games good enough gamers won't be so tempted to off load it so quickly! Rockstar take note!
People will always trade / buy second hand if it saves them money. That's fine and no one is saying that should stop.
However take a look at a game shop and compare the prices of a unused game that is on sale to the price in the huge, more visible second hand section. What you will find is that the second hand price is actually 'higher' than the unused price. I fail to see why anyone would support the greedy retailers over the devs. Don't mistake the second hand market as them caring for the customer, they are ripping you off just as much as anyone else.
Hmm, let's see ... you can purchase game ABC online for £30 but you can't trade it, versus game XYZ that you can purchase for £40, but can trade in and buy a second game for £15, or so ...
Now one could be led into thinking that removing the option of XYZ forces the consumers to behave the same BUT the behavior will change - in line with the new environment and pricing structure.
On top of that it turns it into a higher involvement purchase. Just look at the iPhone as a reminder that low involvement purchases yield much higher impulse buying (and more purchases in general) than high involvement purchases.
So really this bid to remove preowned (and one should suppose lending too) really is not that prudent.
Common sense should tell you that sales will fall and people will buy much less editions of a game. Do you really think everyone who purchases FIFA preowned (or trades in their old version) would be happy paying full price EVERY YEAR? Of course not, we should not be so naïve.
Oh forget it ... they can't hear us in the real world from all the way over there in cloud cuckoo land ;)
