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The GAME group – owners of GAME and Gamestation retail outlets – has just reported that pre-owned game sales accounted for 25.7% of its business in the six months running up to July 31st 2009.
That’s a cool £177 million in revenue, which is a 12.3% increase over the same period in 2008, when the company made a mere £157.8 million and pre-owned sales only accounted for 18% of business. So it’s all very nice for the GAME group, but what does that mean for us and for games in general?
Well, we guess the significant step up in pre-owned sales indicates a couple of things – the sting of the credit crunch and the British games-buying public’s enduring appetite for a bargain. On a wider scale, though, we’re wondering about the effect on the development of new games.
After all it’s going to be harder for the big games publishers to invest if their returns are diminished because we’re all hanging on for second-hand copies and trading them back and forth endlessly thereafter. At the very least the gaming giants may choose to stick to the guaranteed blockbusters and take fewer risks with the titles of more narrow interest.
Meanwhile software pricing might go either way. A quick glance along the high street shelves reveals bargains a-plenty, often with many brand new games discounted from the off. At the opposite end of the scale there are titles like Modern Warfare 2, with its suggested price tag of £54.99. And then we have Sony Europe’s ex CEO, Chris Deering, saying that 70% of new games never recover their development costs and that AAA games should be priced at £70 in order to support the industry.
We appear to be in a bit of a bind, then. If games are too cheap, or we buy too many of them second-hand, the industry suffers – and that could mean less new games for us in the long run. If they’re too expensive, well, fewer of us will be able to afford to buy them and we’re right back where we started.
So is the best solution for us to do the right thing and fork out the full price for new releases? That’d be a bitter pill, and we’re not particularly keen to swallow it – how about you? Meanwhile could the industry make a few economies to help itself out? Take the 300+ highly-paid staff working on Assassin’s Creed 2. That sounds willfully extravagant to us, but maybe that’s what’s needed to get such a beautiful game out of the door these days.
Ach, we’re out of ideas here – let’s hear yours. And please tell us what price you’re prepared to pay for a new video game. Assuming you ever buy new at all, that is...
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If the games were cheaper to start then people wouldnt wait to buy second hand!! They should simply test the theory on a decent new release!!
Posted by: johnston552 on Wed Sep 23 04:13PM | Report abuseI feel that shops selling secondhand games should be forced to sell their new games at a reduced price. It's a fare deal. They get the full asking price on new and pre-ordered games, then they buy them back at a *^%$* % of the price and then re-sell the games.They probably make 150% profit in reselling games, so they CAN afford to sell new releases cheaper!
Posted by: leon_wessels on Wed Sep 23 04:41PM | Report abusefor new releases the price difference is negligable anyway.just today i went into game to part exchange some games to get Batman Arkham asylum.The price difference was exactly 1 pound.38.99 new and 37.99 preowned.But a week after release they will give you 12pound for a game that cost you upwards of 40 seven days earlier.Its no suprise to me that theyre profits are so high when they blatantly rip people off like this.I dont believe the software houses could use less staff as the games will take even longer to make and probably over time cost an equal amount of money.Lets say 300 people make a game in 2 years.If you only have 150 people working on it then you would expect it would take double the time so they would save nothing.A possible solution would be for the software houses to try and get a law passed that would restrict the buying and selling of preowned titles for 12 months after the release date.Aftert this time i doubt it would have a significant effect on the sales figures.
Posted by: maureenkummell303 on Wed Sep 23 04:48PM | Report abuseI used to only ever buy second hand, and if I were to buy a game outright now I'd probably still do the same. However nowadays I've found that it's a hell of a lot cheaper to rent rather than buy a game. Also this removes some of the annoyance when you get a game (that would be full retail to buy outright) that really isn't worth the time or money to play. As for games being £70 I think that's a ridiculous idea, how can they expect people to buy a game that's a third/half of the price of the console you play it on? I quite like johnston552's idea. If they want to sell their games to more people then they really should lower their prices, half the price for twice the customers sounds smart.
Posted by: merlin83uk on Wed Sep 23 05:10PM | Report abuseif they lowered the console price as well that would persuade people to buy consoles and who wants a console without games?! Not everybody has a console and 360 players would finally be able to see how shi+ their console is compared to the amazing PS3! And if they'd stop doing stupid deals with Microsoft so that downloadable content is only available on 360 (and isn't Drake's fortune 2 only on PS3?) then they might make a bit more money!!!!! Twa+s!!!!
Posted by: jonnybanasko on Wed Sep 23 06:45PM | Report abusethe games nowadays are way to overpriced 40£ for a game that many ppl can complete in the day they bught i myself find completeing an average game in about 3h many dont have a great reply value i do wonder though why the new ps3 and xbox 360 cost 40£ while when the ps2 and xbox games first come out they were 30£ i havent found a big a difference in them really
Posted by: thomasjackdavies on Wed Sep 23 07:00PM | Report abuseIf more and more people are buying second hand, then surely that proves that new games are already over priced?
Posted by: elmer632 on Wed Sep 23 07:06PM | Report abuseI've seen GAME sell pre-owned for more than a new game. I bought UT for £15 this year, in the same store they were selling pre-owned for £20. Crazy. As to prices, there are very few games that I want to pay full price for. This year the only 2 are Assassins creed2 and COD:MW2. Aside from these I usually find that I can wait until the price drops to £20 or so. Once it's at £20 I's rather spen an extra £5 and get a new copy frankly. Also, even though the RRP is £55 you can get MW2 for £45 GAME or Play. £70 for a new game is too much though, as merlin says. What I would like to know is how much of that £55 RRP actually goes back to the developer? I would guess most of it, otherwise you would see massive variations in price as the various companies try to compete for sales. As it currently stands out of the 5 companies I check ( GAME, Play, HMV, Zavvi and Amazon) all were within a few pennies of £45. Either there is collusion, a fixed price has been set by the developer (probably also classed as collusion), or they retailers simply don't have anything more to play with. If the developers get £30 per copy sold, and according to wikipedia COD4 has sold 13 million copies that means that gives us a total of £390m. This also leaves £15 per unit for the retailers. Assuming an average of £100,000 per person per annum means a total wage bill for 200 people for 2 years of £40m. This leaves £350m for advertising, outsourcing, production, distribution etc. with those figures I can't see how these games lose money.
Posted by: flodros1 on Wed Sep 23 07:14PM | Report abuseI personally have never bought a pre-owned game (though it would have been cheaper) so i can't really say much against full priced games, but now, I've downloaded 'Steam' games are soooo much better. Steam is a program which sells you games online for usually less than what they are in GAME and you download it and play it almost instantly. They have a deal on every week if not 2 or 3 times a week, so you just need to wait a while and then you have a set of games for
Posted by: cedricsime on Wed Sep 23 07:54PM | Report abuseGame.co.uk are ridiculously overpriced anyway. I wanted to buy UFC undisputed from them for the ps3 and I currently have like £17 on my reward card. However its still less money spent if I buy it elsewhere on the internet as the game can be had for about £20 preowned(sometimes brand new) whereas Game.co.uk want £35 for a preowned copy. You would think being a specialist store with the bulk discounts they get that they could outprice the competition, yet time and time again they are the most expensive EVER.
Posted by: grant_rfc on Wed Sep 23 08:31PM | Report abuse