Lionhead: Pre-owned worse than PC piracy
- Thread starter Crni Vuk
- Start date
Wintermind
Vault Senior Citizen
I only ever saw the one, The soldiers keep guy, since the vast majority of DAO's DLC all didn't take place in the main story, and those that did were all relatively minor other than Return to Ostagar, and the new game 'free' dlc, the Stone Prisoner, which added Shale. But even then, I never found any NPCs pestering me about DLC other than the Soldier's Peak dude.
Wintermind
Vault Senior Citizen
I'm actually cool with in game DLC sales, but the way Soldier's Keep did it was just hilarious dumb.
Starseeker
Vault Senior Citizen
lol, all I can see for this anti second hand movement is a farther push for piracy by many consumers.
The used game market is already similar to some kind of rare dojinshi market. Most of the games I am looking for are no longer distributed, so where the hell am I suppose to find them? My only option other than paying an outrageous price in an online auction or local super specialty stores is piracy.
It's kinda funny that these American companies are doing something that feels quite unAmerican.
The used game market is already similar to some kind of rare dojinshi market. Most of the games I am looking for are no longer distributed, so where the hell am I suppose to find them? My only option other than paying an outrageous price in an online auction or local super specialty stores is piracy.
It's kinda funny that these American companies are doing something that feels quite unAmerican.
Wintermind
Vault Senior Citizen
Most people buying used games aren't looking fr older, hard to find games (not to say that people don't, but that's a search better served by E-Bay or some similar place. Most people who get used games at Gamestop are doing so to get a newer game they want, for less, because chances are the new version is sitting on a shelf not far off.
Or they like to pull what amounts to a sort of scam; Gamestop has a policy where if you return a used game in under seven days, you get your money back. I, and other s I know, have gone to Gamestop A, bought a game I wanted to play, lets say, Metro 2033, played it for a week. Returned it. Gone to store B, and done the same. I've even done it with a friend with nintendo DS games, where they've gone in and immediately picked up the game I just sold, and I did the same in the other store, so we still had access to our save games.
Or they like to pull what amounts to a sort of scam; Gamestop has a policy where if you return a used game in under seven days, you get your money back. I, and other s I know, have gone to Gamestop A, bought a game I wanted to play, lets say, Metro 2033, played it for a week. Returned it. Gone to store B, and done the same. I've even done it with a friend with nintendo DS games, where they've gone in and immediately picked up the game I just sold, and I did the same in the other store, so we still had access to our save games.
ramessesjones
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Game companies are businesses and need to make money, if they think second hand games are cutting into their profits then coming up with ways of counteract that is smart business, whether it is through download content, online play licenses, subscription services or whatever.
When a company says second hand games are worse than piracy, I don't think them mean ethically, they just mean financially. They don't want to prosecute people for buying used games or anything like that. People buying second hand games are people willing to spend money unlike pirates, and so it makes sense for companies to want to attract those dollars instead of letting Gamespot or Ebay profit off their work.
When a company says second hand games are worse than piracy, I don't think them mean ethically, they just mean financially. They don't want to prosecute people for buying used games or anything like that. People buying second hand games are people willing to spend money unlike pirates, and so it makes sense for companies to want to attract those dollars instead of letting Gamespot or Ebay profit off their work.
Ilosar
Vault Fossil
But that's like saying the shared DVD market is killing film as a whole. The comparison is gross, but the point still stands; that a share of the market is not 100% profit (as in customers can share it) doesn't mean the market is not profitable or that that particular share needs to die.
There are several problems with this approach. First, who says used games buyers would have bought the game new in the first place? I know a friend who would never have bought Dante's Inferno for 59.99$, but was happy enough (and even then) to get it at 25.99$. Second, what measures can reasonably be taken to solve the problem? Because short of drastic DRM for console games (which customers will not like) or (lol) outlawing used game sales, I can't see any other possible solutions; before declaring something as a ''threat'' to the market, think about possible solutions. Third, coldly economic reasons may not be the only ones involved; maybe people are tired of being fed the same over-marketed, copy-pasted ''AAA'' crap. Maybe the quality, or possible lack thereof, has a big hand in the fact some people will only buy used games, because who will buy a 4-hour shooter that has both it's single and multi-player ripped off another, better game (talking about Homefront and COD, respectively).
Major game companies should stop denouncing pirates and the used games market and look at what goes wrong with their own practices. The most pirated games are almost always disappointments for which people would not have bought full price anyway (Spore and DA2 were reportedly pirated a lot), and used games will stay until they simply get rid of the physical disc medium, which is not anytime soon as not everybody wants to download a dozen gigs of data every time they want to play. The fact they spend so damn much on marketing and then deliver too short or unfinished products do not help me have any sort of sympathy, especially when they then blame lack of profit on people who, just maybe, don't want to pay close to 70$ for a game in that state.
TLDR; it's partly their own fault if gaming companies have to share the market with the used games market, and almost entirely their own damn fault fault if said market grows. They say used games are a threat; I say their own incompetence is one too.
There are several problems with this approach. First, who says used games buyers would have bought the game new in the first place? I know a friend who would never have bought Dante's Inferno for 59.99$, but was happy enough (and even then) to get it at 25.99$. Second, what measures can reasonably be taken to solve the problem? Because short of drastic DRM for console games (which customers will not like) or (lol) outlawing used game sales, I can't see any other possible solutions; before declaring something as a ''threat'' to the market, think about possible solutions. Third, coldly economic reasons may not be the only ones involved; maybe people are tired of being fed the same over-marketed, copy-pasted ''AAA'' crap. Maybe the quality, or possible lack thereof, has a big hand in the fact some people will only buy used games, because who will buy a 4-hour shooter that has both it's single and multi-player ripped off another, better game (talking about Homefront and COD, respectively).
Major game companies should stop denouncing pirates and the used games market and look at what goes wrong with their own practices. The most pirated games are almost always disappointments for which people would not have bought full price anyway (Spore and DA2 were reportedly pirated a lot), and used games will stay until they simply get rid of the physical disc medium, which is not anytime soon as not everybody wants to download a dozen gigs of data every time they want to play. The fact they spend so damn much on marketing and then deliver too short or unfinished products do not help me have any sort of sympathy, especially when they then blame lack of profit on people who, just maybe, don't want to pay close to 70$ for a game in that state.
TLDR; it's partly their own fault if gaming companies have to share the market with the used games market, and almost entirely their own damn fault fault if said market grows. They say used games are a threat; I say their own incompetence is one too.
No. It is not. It is greedy business.ramessesjones said:
The difference ? Well hard to explain. Particularly as it is my opinion and I am not a business analyst. But smart business for me is mainly coming up with ideas to enlarge the market. Making more profit without limiting your consumers AND giving them a useful/good quality products. Like. More safety in cars = more potentially happy consumers = more people buy your cars. Conclusion. You get to make more safe cars. To limit the choices for the consumer so he is one way or another forced in buying your products (like eliminating a principles of the market and trading with the second-hand-business) is for me simply a greedy strategy. Like to sell DVDs which kill them self after you watched them 5 times (Disney had that idea once ... by the way DRM is not a new thing either)
Without offense. But I find it sad that you try actually to explain the "ideas" or attitude of some people with "smart". Maybe even defend it (no clue). Particularly when other industries have a large second hand market and do not complain about that. Quite the opposite even. Some industries and companies only exist because of this second hand market.
*Edit
Also very much what Ilosar said.
**Double Edit
by the way. I am curious about that point. If said used copy is killing somehow the gaming company how is that going to work ? I mean for example. With piracy I can see that. It has a logic behind. The game gets never bought but stolen. We do not have discuss that part it IS stealing regardless how much people try to find justification it stays theft.
But selling a used copy ? How is that going to hurt anything really in the end. Lets say you have made 100 games. 20 people buy it. And then you have 10 games changing the owner. Why do they make really a lose on that or why do they even play a role at all? Just because those 10 people have not bought the game ? What if the game was simply shit. I mean someone HAD to buy the game in the first place anyway. You will not see a situation where someone suddenly bought 30 used copies even though there have been only 20 sales in total. I see that a company would have liked of course if all 100 games would have been sold to the highest prize possible. But if people smell shit, see shit and hear it is shit they will not suddenly buy it just because the seller claim it is gold inside.
I mean what is next ? Will they call me a "game company killer" because I rather buy games 6 months after release when they dropped 50% in prize ? Or even only after I can get them for 10$ on Amazon.
Just to give another example. I bought Dragon Age 1. But I did not bought Dragon Age 2. Mainly because I overall have not been impressed by DA1 and because many things I have read about DA2 tell me I will disslike it even more compared to the first game. That I can not buy it used (more or less) without issues actually does not really bother me at all because I still will not buy that game for the full prize ever. So they loost my money either way.
ramessesjones
It Wandered In From the Wastes
How does Project Ten Dollar not affect Gamestop? It rewards people for purchasing games new instead of used games where Gamestop makes bigger profits.
People don't only buy used games because used games are too expensive, people buy used games because they cost less than new games; I'd guess much more of Gamestop's business comes from people who want can easily afford afford a new game, but would rather spend $10 dollars less for a used one, because people like to save money. That is market publishers are going after when they talk about used games. The people selling games among their friends are hurt buy this too, but unfortunately they are small time and ignored, which definitely sucks if you're that part of the group.
I doubt that Dragon Age II selling less than expected is going to be blamed on the used game market, considering other games are selling well in the same market. Dragon Age was bad choice for a game to dumb down to appeal to board audience, because it was such a nerdy series in the first place, unlike Mass Effect or Fallout where it can appeal to bros who just want to shoot things. My guess is Bioware/EA will learn from this some and will backtrack a bit making Dragon Age 3 more like Origins.
Game companies being more profitable can be good for game consumers as well, more profitable companies tend to make more games and game companies with better margins can afford to take more risk selling games that are less obviously popular or lower budget games and add ons that sell at lower prices.
Games are mostly intellectual property, their value doesn't come from the physical item like a guitar or car or whatever. The music (and to a lesser extent, film) industry is slowly starting to figure out that physical copies of music are becoming outdated and have shifted more focus to selling digital music at places like iTunes or Amazon or subscription services, with a restructured pricing model and game companies have started doing the same as well, they just aren't as far along in the process. If I was a game developer I'd much prefer to make most of my game sells online, moving only digital content; it makes used games harder to purchase, cuts distribution costs and makes it easier for user to buy games. Retail stores are just a middle men and their role will be reduced going forward and physical copies of games and a large part of the used game market will go along with them (but like music, not completely, lots of people still like to buy CDs at Walmart).
People don't only buy used games because used games are too expensive, people buy used games because they cost less than new games; I'd guess much more of Gamestop's business comes from people who want can easily afford afford a new game, but would rather spend $10 dollars less for a used one, because people like to save money. That is market publishers are going after when they talk about used games. The people selling games among their friends are hurt buy this too, but unfortunately they are small time and ignored, which definitely sucks if you're that part of the group.
I doubt that Dragon Age II selling less than expected is going to be blamed on the used game market, considering other games are selling well in the same market. Dragon Age was bad choice for a game to dumb down to appeal to board audience, because it was such a nerdy series in the first place, unlike Mass Effect or Fallout where it can appeal to bros who just want to shoot things. My guess is Bioware/EA will learn from this some and will backtrack a bit making Dragon Age 3 more like Origins.
Game companies being more profitable can be good for game consumers as well, more profitable companies tend to make more games and game companies with better margins can afford to take more risk selling games that are less obviously popular or lower budget games and add ons that sell at lower prices.
Games are mostly intellectual property, their value doesn't come from the physical item like a guitar or car or whatever. The music (and to a lesser extent, film) industry is slowly starting to figure out that physical copies of music are becoming outdated and have shifted more focus to selling digital music at places like iTunes or Amazon or subscription services, with a restructured pricing model and game companies have started doing the same as well, they just aren't as far along in the process. If I was a game developer I'd much prefer to make most of my game sells online, moving only digital content; it makes used games harder to purchase, cuts distribution costs and makes it easier for user to buy games. Retail stores are just a middle men and their role will be reduced going forward and physical copies of games and a large part of the used game market will go along with them (but like music, not completely, lots of people still like to buy CDs at Walmart).
This must be really an American thing.ramessesjones said:
Why ? Because we Germans and to some extend most of Europe see this in a completely different way. For us it is not so important if the product you buy is intellectual property like a downloaded software or if you buy it in physical form like on a DVD/CD. In the end for the consumer this does not make that much of a difference anyway. Not as much like it does for the publisher/developer.
When you buy here software you buy not only the software but a licence as well. That gives you as consumer a lot of freedom as it basically means that you can sell this software for example as used product to any other person you want because it is seen as private business. That is one of the reason why you can ignore many of the garbage in the EULA of Steam and other "online distributors" since they limit quite a lot of rights you have here as consumer.
I think Corel Draw once had a policy which did not allowed you to sell their software to others. Again. Had no relevance in Germany. We do not make that much difference in Software compared to other products. And I think that is the better solution. Because even if you only "download" a software on your PC or Laptop it is still not the same like a service where someone repairs your car.
What many companies do today with games is that they sell them to the consumer with a lot of restrictions and limitations and explain him that it is "for his safety/comfort" which is only half the truth. Remember we are talking about something which is similar to the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance in which the consumer gets a service sold in the name of "safety" and "stability" but actually imposes a lot of limits.
That's exactly why games published by EA are cheap and DRM-free /sarcasm
Giving game companies a chance to manipulate its customers like this will only result in them [major companies] thinking they can get away with even more bullshit, thus leading to crappier, more expensive games.
No, but sea's analogy still works perfectly well. Just because it's intellectual property doesn't mean you can just castrate it like that. Imagine buying a book that misses a chapter in the middle that you can only get if you pay extra for "DLC". Books are intellectual property. Game publishers are simply doing stuff that's illogical and wouldn't fly in any other industry, and somehow getting away with it.
As for the digital markets, you're both right and wrong. You're right that it's a growing market, and many companies have tapped into it. You're wrong if you think it's anywhere close to replacing the physical CD market. Any self-respecting fans I know buy physical copies. Also consider the fact that not everyone has unlimited broadband internet, and major online services are only limited to certain countries. It's much more rare outside the US to have a credit/debit card, and even more rare outside of Western Europe. Physical stores' roles are getting noticeably reduced, but I think that's because people can now order those physical copies online. And even then, that's only if you look mostly at the US market.
And effin' lol, who buys CDs at Walmart?
not to mention the group of us gamers/software users which are looking rather with some suspicion toward the "online distribution" as only viable marketing/business strategy for said goods.
It all comes from the idea that you buy a song online or on CD but suddenly cant play it in your player or on the PC even because of "piracy" fears. See. They did that kind of system or tried it at least. And now how successful has that system proved in the past ? Not very much. Regardless the fact that they painted most (if not all) of their consumers as potential pirates people actually have not been happy mainly about the inflexibility of the music not being able to get the track you have on CD to your PC so you can upload it to your I-pod or other music players of your choice is an extremely shitty situation considering the price you pay for said tracks usually.
I am always surprised how easily gamers fall in the trap bigger game companies/publishers throw at their feet.
It all comes from the idea that you buy a song online or on CD but suddenly cant play it in your player or on the PC even because of "piracy" fears. See. They did that kind of system or tried it at least. And now how successful has that system proved in the past ? Not very much. Regardless the fact that they painted most (if not all) of their consumers as potential pirates people actually have not been happy mainly about the inflexibility of the music not being able to get the track you have on CD to your PC so you can upload it to your I-pod or other music players of your choice is an extremely shitty situation considering the price you pay for said tracks usually.
I am always surprised how easily gamers fall in the trap bigger game companies/publishers throw at their feet.
ramessesjones
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Crni Vuk said:
Obviously companies with policies like this are only doing it to make more money, not help the consumer. I've never said otherwise, if they say otherwise they are obviously lying. If consumers don't like their policies they can stop buying the games, but for the most part people don't as they think the game is worth it anyway. I'm also fine with people who legitimately can't afford games pirating, game companies should be too, as they aren't losing a sale and if those people ever get money they are a potential customer. I'm also definitely looking at this from in American perspective, so their might be some disconnect from that. (Although I do work for a German software company and most of the focus is on selling software services and upgrades as opposed to a ready to go packages and they definitely wouldn't want people trying to sell the software secondhand, but that usually isn't a problem because it complex enough that it is hard to do.)
Ausdoerrt said:
No, but they do produce a lot of games and more games is better than less. I think they might actually publish Xbox Live Arcade, WiiWare and PSN games as well, which are value priced, but I'm not sure (these types of games are also a good market for niche or odd ball games might not have seen a major release at all a few years ago). For the most part, because the game market is so big most gamers have it better than ever now; that wouldn't be possible if the industry wasn't make tons of money.
Books aren't just intellectual property, a lot of their value comes from the physical copy; for the people that don't care about this though E-Books are becoming more popular and I'm sure that industry is trying their best of make those downloads non-transferable or at least hard to do. This is also true for music, people want the cover art, books, the art of the disk, etc..., hell I have small collection vinyl records, but for people that want the newest Katy Perry or Lady Gaga song they don't really care. With games though, almost nobody cares about the physical copy, the books and boxes tend to be terrible. If you want sell additional merch to accompany the game you can just sell it separately like Angry Birds plush toys.
Most the people on this board like niche, culty products and people that enjoy those things are always the first to get the shaft, because they are a small part of the marketplace, so understand the animosity toward this big publishers, but at the same time I can't fault them, because its unfortunately how a lot of business works.
ramessesjones
It Wandered In From the Wastes
Crni Vuk said:
I agree that anything on a legally purchased item that prevents it from working is stupid and usually counterproductive. Pirates are going to pirate, they are good at what they do, and things like this aren't going to stop it.
Publishers need to focus giving their potential paying customer incentives to purchase not stopping pirates; this includes creating a better products, but also things like convenience to purchase, ease of use, good packaging and bonus content.
I dunno, I'd personally prefer fewer games that are good than several times more games, all of which are mediocre. Though, even if I do accept your value judgement, that's not the point - what irked me about your post is, EA's making lots of money and is publishing more and more games, but I don't see them releasing niche titles. All I see is games becoming more and more generic and geared towards a wide market. Something's telling me that your suggestion that us gamers eating up the industry's bullshit and giving them all our money will move them to release more niche games is false. (And I mean full-fledged niche games, not flash games or iphone games or remakes of old titles on PSN).
Last time I checked, I cared for what's written in a book, not for the space it takes up. Sure there's costs associated with printing books, but most value comes from the content. As for E-books, I know them to be transferable. If it's a PDF, there's nothing to prevent copying; Kindle also has a "lending" service where you can lend your e-book to another person with a kindle.
That depends solely on the publisher. Back in the days, boxes used to be nice; today there's still publishers who care about their customers enough to release really nice boxed editions with extra stuff in them. Notably, those usually come from the smaller companies, which only emphasizes my earlier point that more money doesn't make game companies better necessarily.
I don't think the animosity stems solely from the fact that this niche audience (pretty vague - from what I've seen this forum's opinion is far from homogeneous) is being ignored. Read your suggestions for game industry above, and then think about what the big companies have done to accommodate that. Then compare to someone smaller like CD Projekt.
ramessesjones
It Wandered In From the Wastes
I don't love EA at all, but they have done some ok things, FIFA soccer is much a better game than it used to be. I used to be a diehard PES player, but EA has absolutely trounced that franchise the last few years by making a better product and many of the changes they've made to that series are made to appeal for the more diehard player as opposed to the casual player.
I don't know much of anything about the budget priced games they've released, they might all be terrible (a quick search online reveals they include Microbot, Darkspore, Risk Factions, Deathspank, Gatling Gears, Shank and some more), I'm sure someone somewhere likes these games and most are made smaller developers and distributed by EA to a wide audience that they likely wouldn't have seem a few years ago. Other big publishers are doing the same thing with other smaller developers (The Witcher games for example are published by Atari).
The Bioware games they've published are good compared to the rest of the market despite their flaws and as much Bioware might want to blame EA dumbing down their games, they released Jade Empire which is more dumbed down the DAII, before they were ever being published by EA, Bioware just wants to be a big mainstream company and has for a while.
CD Projekt definitely does good work and I wish there were companies like them and a healthy market helps them stay in business. The more money they make the longer they can keep producing games and not end up like a company Troika and Interplay.
The main thing is that I want game developers to make money, whether they are big company or small, making niche games or mainstream games, the more profitable the market is for those companies the better.
Thanks for the information on the Kindle, I didn't know much about them, I prefer my outdated bookshelves of physical books which I don't think is uncommon. Reading more about lending on the Kindle it looks like not all books are lendable and the owner can't read the books while it is "lended". I'm sure there are simple workarounds to this though, but the intended use restricts how much they are shared.
I don't know much of anything about the budget priced games they've released, they might all be terrible (a quick search online reveals they include Microbot, Darkspore, Risk Factions, Deathspank, Gatling Gears, Shank and some more), I'm sure someone somewhere likes these games and most are made smaller developers and distributed by EA to a wide audience that they likely wouldn't have seem a few years ago. Other big publishers are doing the same thing with other smaller developers (The Witcher games for example are published by Atari).
The Bioware games they've published are good compared to the rest of the market despite their flaws and as much Bioware might want to blame EA dumbing down their games, they released Jade Empire which is more dumbed down the DAII, before they were ever being published by EA, Bioware just wants to be a big mainstream company and has for a while.
CD Projekt definitely does good work and I wish there were companies like them and a healthy market helps them stay in business. The more money they make the longer they can keep producing games and not end up like a company Troika and Interplay.
The main thing is that I want game developers to make money, whether they are big company or small, making niche games or mainstream games, the more profitable the market is for those companies the better.
Thanks for the information on the Kindle, I didn't know much about them, I prefer my outdated bookshelves of physical books which I don't think is uncommon. Reading more about lending on the Kindle it looks like not all books are lendable and the owner can't read the books while it is "lended". I'm sure there are simple workarounds to this though, but the intended use restricts how much they are shared.
Why are you defending it then ? That is exactly what I am talking about.ramessesjones said:
I don't blame people which don't know it better. I don't blame people which buy it because they don't care. But there are many people which actually "defend" even this kind of business with DRMs and DLC things. Particularly the "either buy it or leave it" attitude. Which is nice. But it is clear that has not changed anything on the PC.
Let's see it that way. Because I agree in a lot of things with Brother None. If the gaming business would be a very healthy and creative industry (which it was once probably) we would probably not have to worry all to much about either DRM or hear them whining about "second hand market".
It seems while companies get bigger and release more and more games they are pretty desperate of finding new ways how to squeeze out money. Is that a sign of the gaming market collapsing ? No clue. But it shows that the whole situation is somewhat rotten. Games are not to different to other industries, be it cars, books, movies or such. All have to make money. All have to survive. Yet the only difference is that often enough people allow things to happen with games which failed miserably with other mediums like music or movies for example. I am curious. Is the attention span of gamers so terrible ? Or do people really not care what they buy and swallow today ? I have games here which I played some 10 years ago and still love to play sometimes. Cant say if I will do the same with Dragon Age for example.
Ilosar
Vault Fossil
I know I will still play DA in ten years, if it makes you feel any better.
In any case, there are simply too many factors at work here to blame the market's loss of speed on either pirates or used games. Way I see it the market expanded way too fast over the recent years for it's own good, and now that it's back to a more ''normal'' level everybody goes batshit insane because the products no longer give off loads of profit for minimal efforts. With the development costs soaring, I sincerely hope companies will now take their time to release quality products that are worth the huge amounts of $ put into dev costs and marketing. Of course, maybe I am too idealistic, maybe the industry will still blindly offer the same shit over and over again for years and everything will become even worse, but then I guess I will turn to the growing indie market.
In any case, there are simply too many factors at work here to blame the market's loss of speed on either pirates or used games. Way I see it the market expanded way too fast over the recent years for it's own good, and now that it's back to a more ''normal'' level everybody goes batshit insane because the products no longer give off loads of profit for minimal efforts. With the development costs soaring, I sincerely hope companies will now take their time to release quality products that are worth the huge amounts of $ put into dev costs and marketing. Of course, maybe I am too idealistic, maybe the industry will still blindly offer the same shit over and over again for years and everything will become even worse, but then I guess I will turn to the growing indie market.
Wintermind
Vault Senior Citizen
Developers and publishers are simply trying to get the most bang or their buck. I know that most retailers don't have a huge mark up on games; they don't make a huge load of cash from game sales. They do make profits from magazine subscriptions and people failing to cash in preorders, though, which is part of why they push them (along with their own internal business model on the number of games to order/distribute to their stores, which is the other reason they push preorders. Developers and publishers probably like those numbers too). They do make huge chunks of cash on used games though. They may buy a game for $15 and then sell it for $30, sometimes very quickly. Gamestop lives on used games.
The publisher, however, does not. They don't see any of that money. If three people end up selling/buying the same copy, gamestop saw custom from three people; the publisher only 'saw' one customer.
Subscription services, release day DLC that comes bundled with a game, preorder bonuses; these are all incentives from the developer/publisher to the customer to buy the game new, and, preferably, preordered. Hell, most preorder bonuses come in the box; the sealed box, which means they're in the initial run of the game, regardless of preorder. I dunno if all production runs do this, (though if they do, I'd love to get the other pre order DLC's for FNV).
Hell, I still think that preorder DLC's should be up for sale eventually; maybe around the second or third DLC, or if enough sales are hit or even with/in a GOTY edition. Or even just for sale in the store. For three or four bucks, I'd get some of the preorder bonuses from different stores.
The publisher, however, does not. They don't see any of that money. If three people end up selling/buying the same copy, gamestop saw custom from three people; the publisher only 'saw' one customer.
Subscription services, release day DLC that comes bundled with a game, preorder bonuses; these are all incentives from the developer/publisher to the customer to buy the game new, and, preferably, preordered. Hell, most preorder bonuses come in the box; the sealed box, which means they're in the initial run of the game, regardless of preorder. I dunno if all production runs do this, (though if they do, I'd love to get the other pre order DLC's for FNV).
Hell, I still think that preorder DLC's should be up for sale eventually; maybe around the second or third DLC, or if enough sales are hit or even with/in a GOTY edition. Or even just for sale in the store. For three or four bucks, I'd get some of the preorder bonuses from different stores.
Well, and bad business practices can bring even more money sometimes. Does that mean we should throw anti-trust laws out of the window? (just using that as an analogy).
Seriously, the whole "they're just trying to make money" argument is ridiculous. I don't even see how that can be used for the stream of annoying things publishers do to extort money from the customers. That shit's wrong and should not be tolerated. They should concentrate on releasing good, competitive products, not on inventing ways to sell less content for more money. They're fucking us gamers over, have the audacity to complain about it, and some consumers come and defend them! FFS!
Seriously, the whole "they're just trying to make money" argument is ridiculous. I don't even see how that can be used for the stream of annoying things publishers do to extort money from the customers. That shit's wrong and should not be tolerated. They should concentrate on releasing good, competitive products, not on inventing ways to sell less content for more money. They're fucking us gamers over, have the audacity to complain about it, and some consumers come and defend them! FFS!