Dev asks gamers to buy new and not used.

ncxcstud

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Basically this is what Cliff Blezinski was saying without all the foul language....a compelling read.

Though, as I look at the situation something has to 'give' first

Publishers/store fronts have to sell their games cheaper and get into the range of 'impulse buy' to generate more sales.

Or, gamers have to suck it up (at least first) and buy more new games with the hope that prices will fall because more money is going to the developers...

Of course, both more than likely won't happen since neither of those models fit the capitalistic market model...

http://www.edge-online.com/features...ed-why-game-players-must-support-their-hobby/
 

ProjectBerkeley

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The only game I ever trade in is Madden. Gets me around $20 towards the new version every year.

I'm selective about which games I buy and I always keep them. I won't buy a game unless I'm absolutely sure it's going to have lots of replay value. For example, I'm still finding new things to do in GTA IV. That game came out six years ago. If developers would stop creating junk with six hour campaigns, they wouldn't have to worry about people trading in their stuff. The used market wouldn't be flourishing if people had a reason to keep their games.
 

HeyCori

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It's great to see developers speak up about how used games affect the industry. Microsoft's controversial decision (and subsequent reversal) has at least started the discussion. It will probably take another console generation for something to be done but hopefully the ball is rolling. However, a lot of people in that comments section totally missed the point. A lot of them are defending the used market as a necessity that must be supported but Perry was never disputing that. In fact, he very clearly said that since games "end" that gamers will eventually trade them in. Perry's merely asking that gamers buy new as much as possible. He didn't say anything about never buying used. I guess some people just hear what they want to hear.
 
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martinmc78

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Someone in the comments makes a really valid point about the whole situation and its one of the main reasons why trading in your games is so popular.

People trade in games they don't want anymore to buy new ones they cannot afford.

While I have never bought a used game I have traded 4 or 5 games in when something comes out that I want and have no cash to get it. The game I'm buying is new but by trading in my games I am perpetuating the used game cycle.

There will always need to be that outlet for people and as such the used game market wont be going anywhere in my opinion.
 

Greg Gorby

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$60 for a game is just greed pure and simple. You can't tell me that making a game and porting it over to every sytem known to man isn't profitable. EA makes billions (thats Billions with a B). You make a good game and you will make money, you make a good game for $40 and you'll make a ton of money.
 
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$60 for a game is just greed pure and simple. You can't tell me that making a game and porting it over to every sytem known to man isn't profitable. EA makes billions (thats Billions with a B). You make a good game and you will make money, you make a good game for $40 and you'll make a ton of money.

Proof please. Show me some logical calculations.
 

berty6294

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I never buy used and I never sell. Devs put a lot of time into their games, years. And you know who makes the money? The publisher. The distributer. The Government. Basically everyone but the dev. Same with our music industry, that's why I try to go to concerts (best way to make money as an artist).

I don't think it will take a whole console cycle, Microsoft didn't cave, they are just going to do the transition slowly with updates instead of launching upfront.
 

Pete

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DLC isn't affected by the second hand market. make compelling DLC packs and you'll be rewarded.

But Robert is correct, there's no huge profits in console games. EA and the other major studios are being squeezed dry in terms of producing great games as efficiently as possible (development is expensive).
 

Coreldan

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Groups like EA making tons of money is not baseline about them making good games. There are plenty of studios that make better games, but simply don't have what it takes to sell the amounts EA sells with it's cashcow-games every damn year with minimum improvement and even baseline just a mediocre game.

It's like saying that if you make a good MMO, you will get millions of subscribers and WoW is in that position cos it's the only good MMO ever. That is just false (and I like WoW), as this is about something totally else than about just "making a good game". Most studios that don't belong to the handful of franchises (GTA, CoD, BF, WoW, LoL, EA Sports games) have to lay off half of their staff cos even if they sell well, they would not be able to support the staff they had. Even after laying off half the staff they probably won't make much profit even then.
 

Greg Gorby

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Sounds like Microsoft should have a straight from the Dev download system for XBox. Without raping the devs profit margin. It may cut into microsofts bottom line and we wouldn't want that to happen. I don't buy used games nor sell the games I have but $60 is pricing alot of the kids out of the market and turning them to piracy. Lower your prices and make more money, it sounds crazy but it might just work.
 

Keith Wallace

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DLC isn't affected by the second hand market. make compelling DLC packs and you'll be rewarded.

But Robert is correct, there's no huge profits in console games. EA and the other major studios are being squeezed dry in terms of producing great games as efficiently as possible (development is expensive).

I don't think that DLC is necessarily the answer. In my opinion, replay value and a great initial experience is what is needed. I hate when a game makes me buy DLC to give it enough content to be worth $60, let alone the $70+ it costs with the DLC included. Skyrim (whose DLC I never DID get around to buying) is perhaps the only game in which its quality and quantity was so great that I felt like I got a bargain at $60, and was interested in the DLC.

For the most part, the DLC that we end up seeing is map packs for shooters and car packs for racing games. I will agree that if games like Call of Duty and, more importantly, Halo released campaign-extending DLC, that would interest me. My real issue, though, is that there IS compelling DLC, but not at a good price. I'd be interested in buying map packs to keep multiplayer semi-fresh, but when they charge you $10-15 for 3-4 maps, it feels like you're getting screwed over. That, and I feel like both the map quantity and quality in Call of Duty has gone WAY down since MW2, and even Halo 4 seemed like it had too few maps, since they took a typical amount of maps and split it between 4-player game types and the Big Team ones.

So while I guess I agree that compelling DLC would help, I also think that it already exists, but at a crappy price point. 3 maps in Call of Duty shouldn't have the same price tag as the campaign-extending Skyrim DLC.
 

Keith Wallace

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This statement caught my attention:

"It’s also a Catch 22 that will sink most projects – you’re spreading your team out to add features that don’t actually fit the project theme, and at the end you’re left with a game that people are comparing unfavourably to projects like Battlefield or Halo, with 100 plus developers working on multiplayer alone."

I immediately thought about BioShock 2 and Assassin's Creed. Both seemed to have had their quality decreased due to multiplayer additions, and neither really seemed to have compelling multiplayer, from the reviews I read. I haven't gotten around to playing the multiplayer-enabled Assassin's Creed titles, but I've played through about half of BioShock 2, and I can say it is a noticeable step down from the first title. I'm not sure how much of that had to do with the decision to add multiplayer, but it's what I thought of when I read that sentence.

It's also a concern I have when I think about The Elder Scrolls Online. I'm concerned that the great campaign of Skyrim won't translate its play style to an MMO, and we're going to get another crappy attempt to clone/kill World of Warcraft. We'll see how it ACTUALLY goes, but given that Bethesda's not put multiplayer in its Fallout and The Elder Scrolls franchises so far, I'm wondering if this will go over well at all.

Oh, something else that I noticed and wanted to comment on: "splurge the extra $4 to support the people creating your hobby."

He overstates the matter a bit here. When you're subscribed to GameStop's Rewards program and magazine, you get 10% off of used games. So, a used game that's $55 will be $49.50, $10.50 cheaper than the new copy, before tax. I've considered getting MLB 2K13 for a while now. It's currently $50 used. With that discount, it's $45, $15 cheaper than the new copy. I've also considered getting the Combo Pack that comes with MLB 2K13 and NBA 2K13. That's $65 used, and would be $58.50 after the discount. Considering that it's $80 new (or $21.50 cheaper), it's not just throwing the extra $4 on top of it, in many cases.

The real problem is that games take WAY too long to drop in price. GameStop will drop a used game's price LONG before the new price is dropped, making it quickly become more than just the $5 difference that is there at the start. Halo 4 is $40 new right now. It's normally $38 used. In THAT case, I might be willing to forego the $5 I'd save with the used copy and discount, but it's currently on-sale for $30 used, or $13 cheaper after a discount. When you're talking about getting 5+ games per year, saving $10-20 adds up. I mean, heck, the FIRST Black Ops is still listed as being $50 new on GameStop's site, and it's 3.5 years old. It's $25 used. I'd like to support developers, but they need to have a talk with publishers about their pricing.
 
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berty6294

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It's also a concern I have when I think about The Elder Scrolls Online. I'm concerned that the great campaign of Skyrim won't translate its play style to an MMO, and we're going to get another crappy attempt to clone/kill World of Warcraft. We'll see how it ACTUALLY goes, but given that Bethesda's not put multiplayer in its Fallout and The Elder Scrolls franchises so far, I'm wondering if this will go over well at all.

took the words right outa my mouth! I'm nervous as to how this goes for them.
 

jhoff80

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Both seemed to have had their quality decreased due to multiplayer additions, and neither really seemed to have compelling multiplayer, from the reviews I read. I haven't gotten around to playing the multiplayer-enabled Assassin's Creed titles

In the case of Assassin's Creed 3, I find the multiplayer way more compelling than the single player, to be honest. What hurts the single player there is that they've been pumping out so many Assassin's Creed games every year that 3 was stale before it even came out. Personally, if it was me, I'd have done something crazy to shake things up entirely with 3: dropped all historical content and concentrated on Desmond and the present-time (present-time in the series, I mean).
 

gsquared

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I think a few of you are cherry picking. You are only referencing the largest of all the game developers (EA). Truth be told many smaller game development houses are in serious trouble. A few big name houses have already fallen in the past year.

Oh, and G. Gorby. Here is the net income figures for EA over the last four years:

2010: Loss of $677 million
2011: Loss of $276 million
2012: Profit of $76 million
2013: Profit of $98 million

They are also running a debt to equity ratio of around 55%. They are the biggest of all the game comanies and they are not doing well at all.
 
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I think a few of you are cherry picking. You are only referencing the largest of all the game developers (EA). Truth be told many smaller game development houses are in serious trouble. A few big name houses have already fallen in the past year.

Oh, and G. Gorby. Here is the net income figures for EA over the last four years:

2010: Loss of $677 million
2011: Loss of $276 million
2012: Profit of $76 million
2013: Profit of $98 million

They are also running a debt to equity ratio of around 55%. They are the biggest of all the game comanies and they are not doing well at all.

This is why you see Call of Duty 14 and Assassins Creed 26.

New original content is too risky. Gamers get nervous about it and it doesn't sell as well.
 

ncxcstud

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AC multiplayer is great. Such a wonderful departure from the fps games (though i love those too).

I will say that their 'disc in tray' philosophy works, since I still have bioshock infinite (I bought it used but purchased the season pass) because I want to play the eventual dlc. I don't mind dlc - I'd its good. I've put so much time into borderlands 2 because of the dlc.

Good, compelling dlc is a plus in my book. The first dlc we got with oblivion was crap. As are a lot of the map pack stuff that fps games throw out....
 

In Limbo

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I never buy used and I never sell. Devs put a lot of time into their games, years. And you know who makes the money? The publisher. The distributer. The Government. Basically everyone but the dev. Same with our music industry, that's why I try to go to concerts (best way to make money as an artist).

I don't think it will take a whole console cycle, Microsoft didn't cave, they are just going to do the transition slowly with updates instead of launching upfront.

Thank you for your logical input my friend. It's a shame many people can't just look beyond a price tag to see what they're really paying for.
Allow me to reemphasize your point about the work developers put into games. It takes YEARS to develop a game (especially a good one). They literally work around the clock meeting a strict schedule for deadlines, all so they can release it to the typically ungrateful consumer (which used to be me). Why complain when you can beat it in less than a month? They dedicated a portion of their life to video game that you simply have to play.

$60 is expensive, but as highlighted earlier, something has to 'give' first. Until the used game market is regulated a tad more strictly (as Microsoft attempted (and it can hardly be called strict), new games will remain relatively high in price.
 
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