Study: American Used Game Market 49 Million Strong
The study, performed by consultancy firm OTX and reported on by Gamasutra, showed that only 28% of gamers exclusively buy new games, with 60% buying both new and used.
OTX also found that of the 26 million who sell games, 16 million are what they call "New Game Gluttons." These "gluttons" are gamers who finish their games as quickly as possible, with the goal of selling a title at its highest possible value in order to better fund new game purchases.
The firm has projected an increase in used games sales due to the ailing economy, with one in four gamers polled reporting that they will purchase a used game for the first time in the next 12 months.
GameStop is by far the most popular used game hub, pulling in two out of three of every used game purchase. Many analysts have pointed to GameStop's hold on the used game market as an indicator of its resiliency in the face of a US economic recession.
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reply"OTX also found that of the 26 million who sell games, 16 million are what they call "New Game Gluttons." These "gluttons" are gamers who finish their games as quickly as possible, with the goal of selling a title at its highest possible value in order to better fund new game purchases. "
I'm kind of confused why anyone would do this. Why not rent the game instead? Personally I buy my games and keep them, because either A) it takes me ages to finish them or B) I'll usually play them more than once. However if I only played games once and never expected to do so again - why not just stick with rentals?
Also now that I have a job which doesn't pay minimum wage (hell even if it DID) I don't feel the need to buy games used anymore. I prefer my game to be scratch-free and pristine, and I also get the satisfaction of supporting the developer.-
I do the same thing you do. I've never bought used games...I find it ridiculous that the markup on sales is anywhere from 200% to 300% depending on what game it is. To me, that's highway robbery.
I would guess that the used market is where they make their money because I can't imagine their margins are that thick on the new game and hardware side of things.-
The margins on new games are actually razor thin. That's why Gamestop pushes preorders so forcefully - the publishers sell them titles at prices so close to the MSRP that if even one box out of fifty doesn't sell, the other 49 weren't worth it.
Of course, the publishers have to do that because of the whole one-blockbuster-funding-twenty-flops profit model ... it's a sorry state.
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Plus the fact that renting a brand new game within the first say...month of release can be hard, usually its already out. Especially with my blockbusters limited supply of games.
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same with gamefly. i used to keep my queue stocked with all kinds of games to guarantee i'd get SOMETHING in the mail, but right now i want some very specific games so i only put them in my queue: dark sector, R6:vegas2, condemned 2, smash brothers and bully. i haven't received anything from them in 2 weeks :(
renting new stuff is next to impossible.
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I think there's a lot of good discussion to be had on used game sales and the entire market that gamestop/eb has really created, but I feel it's pretty safe to say if you buy a game only to sell it back, you're only supporting the retailer.
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I'm not sure I follow.
Gamer buys new game, retailer gets small cut (if any), developer gets their cut.
Gamer sells game privately, gamer gets 80-90% back.
Repeat.
True, if you sell the game back to the retailer, they'll then resell it for a profit, but how does that mean you're not supporting the developer?
The only way to support the developer is to buy new games at retail or direct from them. After that, they get nothing, so it makes no difference whether you then sell your copy on.
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Well, sure, not to you - but it's hard to feel the "support" when you watch someone in line in front of you with a new copy of one of your studio's games get talked into the fresh used copy instead.
From your point of view, you've done your part and that's that - it's true, developers weren't going to see anything more on that copy anyway. But by putting it into the used cycle, a single copy if returned multiple times could be sold 3-4+ times over (which is what gamestop/EB sure encourages you to do). Suppose all those 16 million people's copies of games are sold just like that.
In an extreme case, if enough used copies go into the cycle, no new copies have to be ordered and in some cases it might even leave new copies on the shelf only to be returned to the publisher - at publisher expense. Overshipments tend to leave developers owing publishers money, and can take cuts out of future games' returns (which, let me tell you, is awesome when royalty payments are split by the game you worked on like at a previous employer - first game ships and pays the team well, next game ships, and that team and maybe even the next team gets to pay back the money the first team went over :\ )
Now I'd be an idiot to claim that used games alone cause overshipments or drive developers out of business - they don't. But a game is still a huge success at 3-4 million copies (or even 1-2 with the right budget). And 26 million people are selling games? 16 million as quickly as is possible? That's huge, and piling millions upon millions into the used retailers that never sees the developer's hands (...not that most of it would anyway :) ).
Personally I think you should be able to do what you want with it after you buy it but I do take issue with an entire multi-billion dollar chain (or whatever ungodly amount of money they're making) being built on aggressively pushing other people's work for maximum repeated profit. It's capitalism and legal, sure, but doesn't mean it's nice. :) I say if you're going to sell the copy after but still care about developers, dump it on ebay, to a shacker, or a local trade/pawn shop.
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How is it supporting the developer? Ya, you bought the game for full price but then you turned around and solid it immediately for a 40 dollar return where gamestop will then sell it for 2 dollars less than MSRP. It hardly supports the developer as you are supporting gamestop and you also prevented another person from buying it a full price with profits going towards the developer.
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Because.. you bought the game? We're comparing buying a game to sell on with renting. Buying it rewards the developer, renting it.. doesn't?
It's hard to say whether selling it back to Gamestop is preventing a full price sale though. That's the same sort of thinking that clouds piracy loss discussions. I will say that I was talking about people buying games and then reselling privately, as turning around and trading it in is for those people with more money than sense (or time)-
The point here being that when you sell the game back to GameStop, you're effectively adding a game to the used game pool so that the next person doesn't support the developer.
Honestly, at $60 a pop, I've become a lot more picky about which games I buy. Now that I have GameFly, I'm renting and dismissing games that I would have otherwise bought in the hope that I would enjoy them.
I'm not doing much to support the developer, though. Just like when I rent from NetFlix, I'm not doing much to support the director. And when I get a book from the library, I'm not doing much to support the publisher. And when I'm listening to the radio, I'm not doing much to support the artist.
Supporting the content creator isn't usually my motivation for purchasing content.
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