Moore - Publishers must find solution to pre-owned

[wraggster]

Peter Moore, president of EA Sports, has acknowledged that while the pre-owned videogame market is a challenge for publishers, the onus is on publishers to find a way to monetise the second-sale consumer.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz he also stated his belief that the sale of second-hand games - a practice which key specialist retailers in the West, including GAME and GameStop, rely upon - is "their perfect right," echoing comments made earlier this year by SEGA Europe boss Mike Hayes.

"It's their prerogative to do that," said Moore on the pre-owned market. "What we have to do as publishers is find ways of taking advantage of that.

"How do we monetise that second-sale consumer? I think online is the key to that, and finding ways of innovating with that consumer, because they still log-on, and we get access to them, so how do we sell them stuff?

"You like to think you make compulsive game experiences and people won't want to trade them in, but that's their perfect right.

"Again, our point as publisher would be that the business exists, it's a multi-billion dollar business - our job would be to figure out how we treat them as any other customer, how we monetise that consumer."

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/moore-publishers-must-find-solution-to-pre-owned

[chuggman]

Publishers have 2 problems to deal with. Piracy and 2nd hand sells. If you fix the first problem 2nd hand sells will go up... Pirates won't pay more than they have to anyway. If you fix the second problem you may lose customers that may have purchased your game. In fact by killing second hand gaming you could be hypothetically increasing piracy. This is because you are attempting to take away something that the public has forever had. The ability to remove curmmy/ finished/ beat/ all done games from there library and get them to others. Small games don't have this problem. 5-10$ games people know won't resale for much and thus keep them on a cell phone till it breaks. But when you have a downloadable 40-60 dollar game. It would of had resale value if it were a disk kept in good condition. Now you would have to sale the whole console and somehow protect your own information that was left on it. Plus if your console dies you could be out of luck. It keeps looking worse and worse.

For the most part I believe you companies complain a lot. If someone finished playing your game. Why shouldn't they be allowed to give it to someone else pending they don't copy it first. You are being a greedy association when you try to force 2nd hand gaming down the path of no return. However when you are being an upright company trying to prevent stealing by piracy. It is legitimately looked at.

Now to likely the real answer to your problem of second hand games. If you really want people to buy and keep your game. You need to make a really good game that sales well. I know people who still have there final fantasy 7 game because they liked it soo much. You need to not make crappy 40-60 dollar toss away games. As these are the ones most likely to be sold to others over and over.

[apex05]

If i buy a game i don't expect to keep it forever, i mean the game industry's not a charity, we get games and they get money... They have to know that things have to drastically change and a VERY cheap and simplified digital distribution is the only way to begin to solve it, but the world's a long way off being ready for that.

[Jeric]

I'm going to have to agree with Chuggman. Stop producing titles that people don't want to look at again if they ever beat. In this rescession you ahve to think game quality rather than shovelware. Make games we WANT to buy, and more importaintly, games we'll want to KEEP. You get a benefit in not having to throw money down the drain making eighty or ninty titles that suck and get a better return per those fewer games made. Stop making blockbuster opening seller games that do squat after the first month. Make something that will sit and grab me, and i promise you, I will buy it.


...Just as soon as I can find work... *grumble*

[JushinLiger]

I find it out that everyone seems to be getting upset about 2nd hand games. If I remember rightly, Nintendo said it's harming the customer :confused:
I agree with chuggman. If I couldn't buy these games on the cheap then I would probably just download them.
Why do they need to take advantage of 2nd hand sales? Someone already spent £40+ on the game the first time around.

[Maturion]

Peter Moore is a money greedy idiot.
http://kotaku.com/gaming/money-tats/peter-moores-new-ea-salary-279474.php

The games industry is making billions evey year. Good games will always be bought when they come out and it will always be like that.

Bu the price for new games is just way too high. A single Xbox 360 game costs arond 70€. Even after a year GTA 4 still costs the full price. If you buy only 5 new games a year, this costs around 350€. I just can't afford that.

The sad thing is, that even if the sales of video games could be doubled, it's the managers like Peter Moore who'll get the additional money, not the programmers and designers that actually make the games.

[watupgroupie]

This is so stupid... Look at the car industry, they have thousands of people selling used cars where profits don't go to the original manufacturers. They deal with it though, they offer you things that old 2nd hand car just won't do. They need to start doing that themselves, and stop blaming other people for their dumb problems.

[jamotto]

Look at the car industry, they have thousands of people selling used cars where profits don't go to the original manufacturers.

The manufacturers also don't have to maintain and pay for MP servers for all their used cars do they?

[juiceface]

The manufacturers also don't have to maintain and pay for MP servers for all their used cars do they?


This argument makes no sense whatsoever. Car manufacturers have to honor warranties which probably cost them way more than some servers and a bandwidth bill. Reguardless, a company is only liable for the terms stated in the contract of a particular purchase. No one would buy any product if the contract stated "you are the only person who can ever own this item.". Shall we ban garage sales too over this greedy way of thinking? Once you as a consumer owns somthing you are free to do whatever you wish with it. That includes breaking it, using it as a coffee coaster, using it as toilet paper, and even selling it. They wan't their products to be the exception to the rule. You can resale any other physical product on the planet earth but game companies think they are special for some particular reason and should be exempt? I call greed.

[apex05]

This used car argument really doesn't work because most major manufacturers sell authorised used cars, and offer extended warranties, spares, service plans etc so they can make as much from used as they can on new, and unless game developers open up high street stores people won't post games in to them if they only offered £3.20 for a two year old game.

[jamotto]

Reguardless, a company is only liable for the terms stated in the contract of a particular purchase. No one would buy any product if the contract stated "you are the only person who can ever own this item.".

I would recommend you read the EULA of some of the software you "leased". In all most all of them they have a section that for all intents and purposes say "You are the only person who can ever own this item".

[Aryn]

There are simple ways to deal with pre-owned sales...

Give the consumer something for purchasing the game brand new. How about a $10 credit voucher for the Playstation Store, or some cheap merchandise (an action figure, a decal skin for your PSP, a peripheral, clothing...)?

Or, regulate prices to match that of used games, or make deals with stores to keep the prices of new and used games identical. Perhaps threaten to pull their games from used game stores and sell them in stores that do not trade in used games?

Another idea is giving the gamer a code to unlock content in the game that is entered in the PSP system, and maintaining a computer database that remembers the PSP MAC address for the specific code so when used on another PSP system the code will not work.