The Xbox One Thread

[Family Fry]

Ahhh gotta be GAME then.
In seriousness I can never find a decent trade price for many games I buy new, week after release price normally gets bummed in the gob and they offer you ?8 for a game you bought, week before for ?29.99.
Least you have option to sell on privately.

[ETC]

Ahhh gotta be GAME then.
In seriousness I can never find a decent trade price for many games I buy new, week after release price normally gets bummed in the gob and they offer you ?8 for a game you bought, week before for ?29.99.
Least you have option to sell on privately.

If you live near one Grainger Games pricematch Cex usually trade and/or cash as long as they don't sell it for less than the value Cex offer

[Adam Stone]

The most depressing thing, the best game in my bag was Child of Edin, and guess how much that went for???

?1

...I actually felt sick.

[Uli]

You say gamers would buy less games, but I bet it would actually have a positive effect on the number of new games sold, which is all any developer cares about.

you may bet but i advise you to have a look at common economic rules Boris. gamers wont just buy more new games because there's no option anymore to purchase used games. in fact there is another option: no purchase at all. because income and budget is limited. even for you Boris

[sj33]

I just don't see why gaming is special and should somehow be exempt from trading practices and laws that exist in other industries. Second hand sales and reselling of goods is the norm in every other major industry. The video games industry is possibly the only industry in the world where second hand sales would be restricted and people would actually defend the move.

If second hand books were banned, I suspect people might kick up a bit of a fuss. The gaming industry has been able to creep in this direction because it's arguably still not quite mainstream, but it will be interesting what the ramifications would be if Valve lose the aforementioned lawsuit.

As a side note, some digital distributors such as Greenmangaming do actually allow you to sell and trade your digital purchases, so it's not as if digital sales make reselling impossible.

[Brad]

The most depressing thing, the best game in my bag was Child of Edin, and guess how much that went for???

?1

...I actually felt sick.

I only paid ?2 for my copy new

[Brad]

Shaky makes an excellent point. Why should games be singled out for this practice?

[originalbadboy]

Shaky makes an excellent point. Why should games be singled out for this practice?

They shouldn't but because its technically possible they do.

If car makers could technically lock a car down when it was sold on, trust me they would.

[Dogg Thang]

Maybe due to the way 2nd games sales took over. Books sales are a good comparison. Yes, there are loads of second hand book sales and shops that sell nothing but second hand books. But go into the big shops, the Waterstones or modern not out of business equivalent (no idea if they are out of business) and you won't find most of the store made up of preowned books.

In most other forms of media, second hand sales were all fine and easily found and yet the norm for big mainstream retail outlets was not second hand sales, but new product.

Games stores and then more mixed stores that sold games embraced preowned sales in a way that most other areas never did (except perhaps cars which many people bring up in examples, but I'd struggle to find another example). I don't know why that happened to games and not other forms of media but that made it big enough to be considered a problem. Second hand sales became an enemy. When the main retailers in your industry are pushing product you're making nothing from over all else, you're going to do what you can to change that.

[Brad]

Just realised I have somewhat double standards on this. On the one hand I should be allowed to sell and buy 2nd hand games. On the other hand I'd be perfectly happy (and probably celebrate with a nip of Laphroaig) if high street shops were banned from trading in second hand games. I think shops / businesses should be dealing in brand new products. Second hand is for the likes of this forum, ebay and the schoolyard.

[ETC]

Maybe due to the way 2nd games sales took over. Books sales are a good comparison. Yes, there are loads of second hand book sales and shops that sell nothing but second hand books. But go into the big shops, the Waterstones or modern not out of business equivalent (no idea if they are out of business) and you won't find most of the store made up of preowned books.

In most other forms of media, second hand sales were all fine and easily found and yet the norm for big mainstream retail outlets was not second hand sales, but new product.

Games stores and then more mixed stores that sold games embraced preowned sales in a way that most other areas never did (except perhaps cars which many people bring up in examples, but I'd struggle to find another example). I don't know why that happened to games and not other forms of media but that made it big enough to be considered a problem. Second hand sales became an enemy. When the main retailers in your industry are pushing product you're making nothing from over all else, you're going to do what you can to change that.

Probably down to rrp and nothing more. Your average book is what ?10-15, likewise a CD/DVD whereas a game has always been ?40 so it was probably purely down to price and cost. If games had been ?15-20 I doubt very much the second hand market would have been as prevalent you didn't really see much second hand sales back in the Spectrum/C64/Amiga days when games were ?3-?20 rrp (I know there was a lot of piracy but that's not the same)

[Team Andromeda]

Just realised I have somewhat double standards on this. On the one hand I should be allowed to sell and buy 2nd hand games. On the other hand I'd be perfectly happy (and probably celebrate with a nip of Laphroaig) if high street shops were banned from trading in second hand games. I think shops / businesses should be dealing in brand new products. Second hand is for the likes of this forum, ebay and the schoolyard.

Good points and spot on really .

[nonny]

Just realised I have somewhat double standards on this. On the one hand I should be allowed to sell and buy 2nd hand games. On the other hand I'd be perfectly happy (and probably celebrate with a nip of Laphroaig) if high street shops were banned from trading in second hand games. I think shops / businesses should be dealing in brand new products. Second hand is for the likes of this forum, ebay and the schoolyard.

This is part of the problem really. Shops with 80% of their floor space dedicated to pre owned titles because they get higher margins... If all the shops had only new titles and 2nd hand was to only be found on eBay then you'd expect more new game sales just because of passing trade not having the choice. Unfortunately it'll never happen as the bricks and mortar stores thrive on reselling trade ins.

[Dogg Thang]

Given the state of many physical retailers, I'm not sure 'thrive' is quite the right word.

I was in a place a while back looking for a new DS. Without even thinking, they gave me a preowned one. Didn't mention it was preowned. It was just like it was either accepted as perfectly normal or they were happy putting one over on people. Needless to say I didn't take it but I did think that this really wouldn't be accepted with almost any other type of goods. When you go to a shop, unless it's specifically a second hand shop, you expect new goods. That's regardless of whether it's media, toasters, Blu ray players, computers or whatever it is and, as far as I can see, regardless of price point too.

Major games retailers basically took the piss here and we're now living the result.

Edit: As the physical retailers die, it also seems we're seeing this more and more with the online retailers beyond just games, with marketplace retailing becoming much more common. So while the games industry seems to be getting there a bit earlier (all industries are slow to react), my guess is we're going to be seeing things get even messier as other industries tackle the same issue.

And when 3D printers get into the homes (very soon), it's going to be awesome for us in the home but it will be a complete destroyer of business models. And then there will be little financial gain in creating anything. It's going to be a total game-changer and will be very interesting to see what survives.

[EvilBoris]

Games arent the only ones,it's happening already with books, music and other software already.