Lionhead: Pre-owned worse than PC piracy

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Lionhead: Pre-owned worse than PC piracy

Fable III developer Lionhead has told Eurogamer that second-hand (pre-owned) sales on Xbox 360 are today a bigger problem than piracy on PC.

Fortunately, Lionhead has already managed to cover development costs with first-hand Xbox 360 sales, which are "in their millions".
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I don't want to insult people. But are some of them dense ? Sure lot of talking about "piracy" which is probably more or less expected. Developers/publishers have every right to protect their products. No issue with that - in which way they should do that though is a different question but I do not even want to discuss that.

But second-hand games worse then "piracy" ? Well It is nice to see game developing studios and publishers finding ways to fix it in the name of "fighting piracy!" with accounts, registrations and authentications. And the gamers don't even realize how much they get bossed around.

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"For us it's probably a no-lose even with piracy as it is," shrugged West. "But, as I say, second-hand sales cost us more in the long-run than piracy these days."
(...)

So second-hand games are killing PC gaming in the long run ? Yeah I guess in the same way as second-hand cars destroy the car industry. I mean hey they are complaining for DECADES that they are a dieing business aren't they! Or wait wait. Real property. What is whit those people which buy a house instead of building a new one! They kill the whole construction industry! How can they!

It is MY right to buy games cheap as second-hand products from other people when I do NOT see to pay a full prize on a mediocre product. Maybe. If they would get games out which have a plot that goes longer then 5 hours I would consider to pay 60$ on it. Or games with some quality inside. Not just cheap DLCs which do actually ad nothing to the game (see Mass Effect and their last ME2 DLC).

I really don't want to look like I just rant. But I am somewhat frustrated by the current policy of some of the publishers. Particularly when you can see that it CAN be done in different ways. Where some companies manage to throw out good games and they do not complain about second-hand copies changing their owner. Cant say how disgusted I am from this "forced" registration/account stuff in recent games. Particularly as I was runing in quite a lot of issues lately. Server down times. Failed registrations ... it is awesome to have a game you bought sitting on your desktop runing PERFECTLY without that crap. But you cant play it because they dont let you.
 
If publishers and developers want to reduce the second-hand games market, how about they start making games people actually don't want to part with? In my opinion they're taking the wrong approach by making extra content available for free to the first owner only and by implementing schemes like EA's 10 dollar online pass.

Replayability, different endings and maybe even longer support in terms of added content after release are better methods of avoiding resale.
 
So second-hand games are killing PC gaming in the long run ?
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That's not what he said. He said that they lose more in second-hand sales on Xbox than in pirated games on PC. Second-hand market on PC is pretty much dead anyway, considering the recent surge of limited-activation DRM.

But I mean so what, he can complain about it but what's he gonna do about it. Second-hand games on consoles have been around, like, forever, and I doubt it will change.
 
I can be wrong of course, but it always sounds to me that eliminating the second hand games market would only be a step towards managing to keep the prices of games high on the long run.

As people can not buy a second hand copy they can either wait until the price of the copies in the stores or digital downloadable version goes down to a price they are willing to pay.
Or give in and pay as yet the full price, even after the game is out for over a year.

Perhaps I am a bit paranoid, and I know more market factors are involved in the price labeling of a game and reasons why prices can go down, but in cases like this I always feel I should look at the worst in people.

A market where publishers have complete control sounds like something they would love.
 
A used market is critically important in a lot more than just video games. Buying new items when perfectly satisfactory ones are plentiful is a huge waste of resources and as people are beginning to ponder a world with dwindling resources it's going to continue to grow whether the publishers like it or not.
 
Ausdoerrt said:
So second-hand games are killing PC gaming in the long run ?
Click to expand...

That's not what he said. He said that they lose more in second-hand sales on Xbox than in pirated games on PC. Second-hand market on PC is pretty much dead anyway, considering the recent surge of limited-activation DRM.

But I mean so what, he can complain about it but what's he gonna do about it. Second-hand games on consoles have been around, like, forever, and I doubt it will change.
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Maybe, maybe not. But:

"It's just a depressing situation we're in that people don't think it's worth spending money on computer games," said West. "What they're doing is making sure there are fewer games coming out in the future and more people out of work, which is a terrible thing.

"Unless you sit down and meet a pirate face to face and have a conversation about what it does, I don't think anything will stop them."

This is what he has to say about piracy. And this is what he said about second-hand games.

"For us it's probably a no-lose even with piracy as it is," shrugged West. "But, as I say, second-hand sales cost us more in the long-run than piracy these days."

I sure do have enough trouble to understand people correctly. But I don't think misunderstood the potshot here.

I think it was BN which explained once that the gaming industry is at the moment in dire need of getting money as it seems to become more and more difficult to sell their games. Either because of very expensive development/marketing or simply because people are saturated. With games which cost 100 of millions with marketing and production it is no surprise that some HAVE to simply sell at least 1 million copies to cover the costs.

Second Hand games are here just a thorn in their side. And I do not believe that the second hand market is that small. See on e-bay how many used games you can get there. Sure DRMs make it very difficult. But still. DRMs like we see from EA, Ubisoft or Rockstar are NOT what all game developers use. You can still get I guess (I don't know it) half of the games without registration. At least on the PC. Maybe you do not buy your games that way. But I love to buy them on Amazon for example and many times just for half of the prize.

But what ever if the second-hand market is now big or not is not even the point. Point is the way how many publishers see it. And that is disgusting in my eyes. It makes it more difficult to get games out ? Like said. How do others deal with it then. Second-hand is nothing new in the car business. Or other industries. And they still survive.
 
You can buy most games new for around $15-20 eventually anyway, so there isn't much need to buy used. Stores like Gamestop rip people off by doing $20 dollar trade-ins then selling that same game at $55 ($5 below retail). That's where the real problem is.
 
korindabar said:
You can buy most games new for around $15-20 eventually anyway, so there isn't much need to buy used. Stores like Gamestop rip people off by doing $20 dollar trade-ins then selling that same game at $55 ($5 below retail). That's where the real problem is.
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Well, it's people's choice to sell it to them instead of selling it on their own via amazon, ebay, craigslist, etc. If customers demanded more money from gamestop they'd eventually have to compensate more. I'd never buy a used game for $5 off but getting a perfectly good copy of Bioshock for $10 or 15 was nice.
 
This "anti-used game" stance by some publishers is just dumb. Imagine if Ford or GM came out and said that buying a used car was tantamount to stealing it off the street. They'd be fired for that kind of nonsense.

Here's a thought game industry, not all games are worth $60 + tax. If you can sell a PC version of a game $10 cheaper than the console version, why not chop the price of all games?

Also, if I buy a used version of a game, it's not a "lost sale" for the company because I wasn't planning on buying it new to begin with, otherwise I would have when it first came out.
 
Guiltyofbeingtrite said:
Well, it's people's choice to sell it to them instead of selling it on their own via amazon, ebay, craigslist, etc. If customers demanded more money from gamestop they'd eventually have to compensate more. I'd never buy a used game for $5 off but getting a perfectly good copy of Bioshock for $10 or 15 was nice.
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I got Bioshock from Steam for $5. With prices like that there's no need to buy used or pirate.
 
Maybe people wouldn't be so inclined to buy used games, if the prices weren't jacked up on the games and their DLC, as well as so many games just being half-assed and not worth the full retail price anyway? Nah though, it couldn't be that, people love paying $60 for a crap campaign with little replayability, then paying $15 for a few multiplayer maps right? *Hurr*

Also meh Phil, I thought Fable III was quite good. :)
 
Courier said:
I got Bioshock from Steam for $5. With prices like that there's no need to buy used or pirate.
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I doubt you could get it on Steam for that prize on release though.

sea said:
The reason console games are more expensive is because the development costs are (typically) higher on average due to the demands of consumers regarding graphics (PC gamers tend to be more tolerant of dated production values), and also because the licensing fees on top of games the console manufacturers get are about $10. As it is, only about $15 per sale actually goes to the publisher assuming standard retail price, and unless it's a low-cost title, breaking even demands, bare minimum, 500,000 new copies sold.
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I have serious doubts about that when you consider how many companies spend most of their money on marketing today then the actual development. The difference if there is even one (which I doubt ...) is probably not that big to say "ok we need to make console games 20% more expensive then PC games".

I am not sure about console development. But it cant be more difficult then on the PC. In fact console games get programmed on the PC from what I know. So it is not like there are completely worlds between them programming stays programming after all (but there are definitely differences). On the other side one of the biggest criticism with Crysis 2 on the PC was that it looked exactly like the Console version even though they could have easily made it look better since the game lacked the correct support for hardware one may even say it was "scaled-down".

To say this though. I do not question the usefulness of second-hand business. But actually the way how they explain it today. That it is for them on the same level like piracy. And something they "have" to fight. JUST to survive you know! How greedy can a company actually be ? Or is the industry really in such a dire situation and needs every penny they can get no matter the cost ?
 
I don't know if companies realize that if they priced games around the $20-30$ range, they'd probably sell a lot more. A lot of times I'll pass up a game because I don't want to spend $50-$60 on a game I know I'll only be able to enjoy for a couple hours.

Edit: Like when I said I got Bioshock for $5; when I see a game I want for that cheap, I'm going to buy it. You don't even really think about it for a price like that, it's just an impulse.
 
You have to consider what they stand to make if they sold a game for 20 or 30 dollars. They have to make money on the game.

More developers should do like what Bioware/EA does though. I prefer my games new, and including 'DLC' items that you get with a new copy, or access to something like the Cerberus Network works pretty well. I wouldn't be surprised if Activision develops a system to cut people out of the multiplayer of the next Call of Duty or their next big title if they don't buy new.

Developers basically hate used games sales because they don't see any of the money. That's why EA has been getting into the above stuff in a big way.

By the way I'd like know how a game that was fun and enjoyable and sustained itself through multiple playthroughs is a failure on every level. To me, a failure on every level would be a disc that shatters inside your xbox and causes it to explode so you don't get to play the game that doens't work.
 
And yet, I've only seen them on the start up screen of ME2, excepting the Soldier's Keep dude in DAO, which I haven't seen since. And it doesn't really bother since it lets me know when it's out. It's not like a really out of place ad for coke or pepsi or some retarded shit like that.
 
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