‘Pre-owned a bigger problem than piracy’

As EA is set to implement a divisive $10 pay-wall in a bid to curb pre-owned sales of its games, one experienced UK developer believes the threat of second-hand sales must be addressed.
In fact, Blitz Games Studios co-founder Andrew Oliver believes that piracy is not the biggest problem facing the game industry, but instead one part of a bigger, underlying issue; lost revenues.
“Arguably the bigger problem on consoles now is the trading in of games,” he tells Develop.
“I understand why players do this, games are expensive and after a few weeks of playing you’ve either beaten it, or got bored of it so trading it back in to help pay for the next seems sensible when people are short of cash.”
However, citing figures suggesting that games are traded in as many as four times, he says that – if true – this means that publisher and developer royalties are effectively quartered.

“So while retail may be announcing a reasonable season, the money going back up the chain is a fraction of what it was only a few years ago. This is a much bigger problem than piracy on the main consoles,” he added.
Oliver adds that the damage done by the pre-owned business will push publishers towards “digital downloads, either the full game, or downloadable content releases.”
Today EA revealed it is introducing a $10 pay-wall scheme that will see its line of sports games come bundled with a free pass card for online services – permitting access to online games, downloadable content and other online bonuses.
The pass card will work much like a Microsoft Points card, with users having to input a code to get online access. Once the code is used, the player’s online account is activated and the pass card becomes useless.
It means that, in theory, all pre-owned EA Sports games found at the retailers won’t be offering free online access. Those who buy EA Sports games pre-owned can still get online access, but will have to pay $10 for one.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/3...em-than-piracy

Most people wouldn't have even bothered buying many of the games they did if it weren't for the good deal you get buying second hand. I'm sure it will help them some but not as much as they think. Most of my second hand buys are slightly older games you can't just go and buy anymore, usually a memorable PS2 game or something. It's like with piracy, most of the games being downloaded would have never been bought in the first place.

Stupid. Maybe companies should make games that are worth keeping and people wouldn't trade them in so much. I have such a hard time finding any decent games these days. Seems like when I was younger most games were amazing and weren't just pushed out to capitalize on preexisting successful titles.

it's true, i have only 4 ps3 games i think are worth keeping. the rest i sell or trade back in.

seems the hardware is advancing but the developers are still in a ps2/xbox/cube model of game development.

plus i always wondered why i buy a new game 50$, trade in after beat to get 10$ and they resell on shelf for 40$. pirates could never hope to compete with that profit margin.

gamestop is doing just that stopping video games.

This industry is a complete joke. They have NO RIGHT AT ALL to do stop pre-owned sales. If they want us to keep a product and buy them brand new, they need to make a product worth keeping and bring the price down to something more affordable!

They are just greedy con artists. Dont support these clowns.

EA are only going to lose with the restriction of pre-owned sales, because even if the customer pays £2.99 for FIFA 09, they still have the option of purchasing the DLC which in most cases the DLC gets purchased if the game is made worth it's while to purchase.

If EA wanted to persue the path of restricting the pre-owned market, I personally suggest they start up a trade in scheme where they can control the pre-owned titles and re-sell them at what they see fair... Which I would overall laugh at EA, because a majority of the games released today are made in quantity and not the quality of what they were 15-20 years ago. I've not purchased a brand new EA title since maybe 2002/2003, which all the titles from EA on my PS3 and Wii are pre-owned since I don't feel that the games are worthy of being purchased from new. I only own five EA titles for the PS3, well six if the PlayStation Store Red Alert counts. Only one of which wasn't pre-owned (since DLC cannot be pre-owned), nine of my thirty two physical titles were bought from new since the quality of games are decreasing and all games need a home...

EA will make games homeless! :(