• 12Jun 09

  How 2nd Hand Sales are killing the Original IP "Editorial"

  Have you ever walked into your local GameStop and the "game advisor" tells you all about their trade program? Sure, of course they have. Have they ever told you can get games for virtually nothing thanks to the deals they have in place? Deals like an extra 20% if you reserve the hot titles on the horizon. Yeah, probably. Sounds good to you right? Of course it does...until you work there. Now, let's say you now go trade in your games. What's this? 3 dollars? But this game is only a few months old and you sell it for $29.99 used! Sucks, right? Fine, we know that they're marking things up anywhere from 300 to 700% sometimes more. You lose. But do you who else loses? Developers and publishers, and in the end....you again. Why are new games so expensive? Because publishers have to squeeze as much out of the product as possible before the largest niche retailer in the world sponges as much profit off of a single product as possible. The publisher has one shot to sell the game. GameStop has countless amounts of oppurtunities to sell this, first of all GameStop did not make the product, they sold it. Now they ask they consumer to bring it back and promises to give them a deal on their next reserved product. GameStop sells the product you just traded in for about 500% more than they gave you...well, give or take. Someone buys it. They get suckered in to buying a card to save 10%. A few weeks later said person trades the game in and the cycle begins all over again. GameStop can sell the same game at least 15 more times at slightly less than MSRP. Now, let's say you're the publisher. You have a problem, you can't afford to distribute products that don't bring in maximum profit, because your profits are being taken away by a retail chain that you are forced to advertise with since they bring in so much traffic. Now you have a developer that wants to make a new IP, but the publisher says no, get back to the liscenced product that we have tasked you with, we cannot afford to give you the budget for said project. The devoloper goes back and dreams of ideas that may never be, thanks to you. The consumer. Thanks to GameStop and others of their ilk. The 2nd hand market gives you nothing and saves you a couple bucks while you feed the hand of greed. Of course all businesses are greedy, but this business kills imagination. What good is a world without imagination?

  • Posted Jun 12, 2009 4:05 pm GMT
  • Category: Games
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