Amazon have one of the largest pre-owned sections in the world, aka auction/trading. Sure they personally don't make the money out of it but they take money from the sale as do ebay.

 

To a certain extent, although in a lot of cases that only happens if you go through a main dealer. Back street garages using 3rd party spares etc count for a lot of the market.

Not sure it's quite as clear cut as that. I know that a number of high street retailers until recently have been struggling to survive, with low profits etc. If the 2nd hand game market is as large as you suggest, then these companies must be attributing a large part of their survival to this market. If you remove it, then it's likely that you'll see a large number of store closing down, and in the process, removing the high street advertising presence that these stores provide. That may hurt the industry even more than the 2nd hand games...

Actually, I buy quite a lot of pre-owned cds, especially when experimenting with new stuff

 

Sure, but it's not the same as profiteering. Plus obviously the high street retailers I mentioned don't have any form of second hand sales at all.

 

Amazon do sell 2nd hand games - just about every item, has a "buy new or used" link underneath it - it may not be Amazon selling the item, but they're telling you where you could buy it from, mostly cheaper than themselves.

bu99er - beaten to it...

 

Right, but there is some feedback. With game pre-owns, there is absolutely zero.



GAME and GAMESTAION (also owned by GAME) deal in pre-owns. That's it - Don't tell me that its necessary for them to sell preowns to survive, given the absolutely montrous revenue made from videogames sales.

If thier business model is based on pre-owns then the sooner the get out the better - because they are doing the industry no good whatsoever by sucking out millions of pounds of sales from developers. There are plenty of other retailers there to take thier place.


Ok, but how? Second hand on ebay? An indie shop? That is a world away from mass re-selling by a single entity.

 

Which one is it?

 

Also bear in mind, the retailers have to buy the game from you & pay the v.a.t. on the cost of the re-sale, they in most cases are only making a few quid.

 

They buy from you at least £10 less than they sell it for. Plus of course, you only pay VAT on the difference between the purchase price and the sale price.

So maybe they have to pay £1.75 in VAT on the average trade in and make £8.25 clear profit - For doing absolutely **** all.

 

There's also shops like Games Exchange, and there's a large one in the center of Swindon (I can't remember the name off the top of my head but it's a larger shop than Game just down the road) that also does it. There are shops all over the place that do this.

GAME was in trouble a couple of years ago (I remember reading about it). You were suggesting that they make huge profits form 2nd hand games, so it must be playing a part in their revival.

Get most of it from Amazon these days to be honest. I have bought plenty from shops as well in the past, but most of them have closed down around here now - forced out by HMV

 

I don't think you've quite thought it through...

 

words

context

taken out of...

 

Jesus christ there are some naive comments being made on here!! Unfortunately I don't have time to respond but it's a real eye opener!

 

Must have been about the time they stopped doing the 14 day full refund policy...

 

Yeah there one up near my kids, a CeX - But they tend to be a more specialist place. You know, rare stuff and old stuff
Should have gone to the wall then!

I mean, the video game industry is worth billions - Surely you should be able to survive without reselling items - I mean there more money in it that there is for Film sales. If HMV can survive without having to become parasitic leeches, then I am sure GAME can.



There used to be a indie second hand record shop round by me - Was really good.

See, people tend to buy second hand records, because they can't buy them new any more. because they are out of print.

This is fine, because what other option do you have? If the publishing company decides that they don;t want to press any more coipies, then the second hand market becomes completely legitimised.

The same applies ot the games market. Games are in print for a relatively short period of time - If you picked up, say , a pre-owned copy of Final Fantasy 10 - Then both you and the shop you got it from are completely justified.

However, it doesnt work like that with GAME.

THey will sell you a game for £40, which, lets say you dont get on with. Since their 10day return policy has gone now, you go to trade it in. They pay you , say £26, and then put it on the shelf at £37.99 - For effectively a brand new game.

Its this sort of thing that really gets my goat.

 

Naive? Which comments are those then?

Personally I think a good question to ask is why people are shelling out money for 2nd hand copies of a game (which may be in far less than perfect condition) rather than get a new one. In my case, it boils down to a few things...

• New games cost a lot of money (especially from the shops). Most new stuff is in the £40-£50 bracket, which makes the 2nd hand stuff look attractive.
• Most people don't give a toss as to who gets the money, if they can save money themselves.
• There are so many average games being released these days that people simply don't want to risk shelling out a lot of money for them. Length of gameplay seems to have decreased dramatically over the last few years as well, (they are becoming more style over content), so you are getting less for your money.

There are probably a lot of other reasons. I have bought 2nd hand games (F1 for the PS3 last week for £10 for example), but usually only because I have read average reviews of said games and don't want to waste too much of my money if it turns out to be a turkey.

I do wonder if the industry itself has to take some blame for this situation. By having expensive on-the-shelf prices, and mostly average gameplay, I susepct they have helped to create environment for this market to flourish in.

 

I think both of these statements are true, and perhpas the industry could force the issue by lowering prices of games.


However, we demand such a massive investment from developers now - I mean the average game will run into millions of dollars to develop, and we have not seen any real terms rise in price since the N64 days.

That said, I would like to see game prices drop to £30 or even £25 to see if my suspicions with regards to them selling many moe copies are ocrrect - As you allude to yourself, people are more likely to take a risk on a game they are unsure of if it doesn't cost a packet.

 

i buy a lot of pre owned games

grainger games have the main head office just around the corner (they have about 13/14 sites around the north east now) so its easy enough to get them games

i see them opening new stores all the time, the market for preowned stuff is huuuuuge

from starting off with 1 stall in a market when i was a youngun, they have came a massive way in a short space of time, and its all down to preowned games.

when i was in yesterday it was full of grandparents buying preowned games for grandchildren with the odd "loner" bloke with no life (me included lol)

until quite recently we had the head chaps car in for regular valeting every monday, spoke to a few of the people quite high up and they are creaming it.


why i buy preowned games.


Some games are not worth full price!!
quite fancied "army of two" few mixed bag reviews around, tried the demo, quite liked it but found some flaws.

had all intentions of walking into the shop yesterday and trading in 4 old games against a new copy of AO2.

walked in the shop and they already had a preowned copy on the shelves for 30quid

its a no brainer, i don't mind paying full price if a game is good and worth it (COD4 GOW etc etc)

but some of the average titles are not worth it for the average gamer IMO

i traded in
mass effect
dead or alive 4
burnout paradise
the club

i got around 40quid for the 4 above, they are worthless to me (bbought them all as preowned anyway), never really liked any of them

i walked in with 4 worthless games (to me) and walked out with a new release (AO2) and the Simpson's game, and i only had to pay 2quid towards the balance!!


FWIW i think trading in games is a LOT better then some toe rag flashing his console, and burning a few games to disc from a torrent list!


out of all the RRP games i have paid for i have only ever kept a few of them as "keepers"

Gears
COD2
COD4
Orange Box
Sega Rally
PGR3 (bought PGR4 as a new title and traded it in)

the rest have long since gone as to be honest, i thought they were a bit crap (bioshock, devil may cry all the usual "good" reviewed games)

 

Whilst it's undeniable that the industry loses money from 2nd hand purchases, ask yourself how many of those people would of paid £40-£50 if they couldnt get it 2nd hand. How many millions per year do Adobe lose from pirating photoshop, point is it's not all lost revenue as people wont go out and spend £500+ for a proper copy, so no it's not all lost sales.

Alot of the blame as to lie with the publishers churning out crap and rushing bugged releases, aka Fifa, NBA, Madden, apart from updated teams the differences in gameplay/features is minimal for a full price game each and every year.

 

Every business operates a model for trading, making money, whatever. Car manufacturers make a certain amount of money selling the car, then more money on parts.

Garages are like Game if you like, they sell the cars and take their cut. They also make money on servicing. They buy second hand cars and sell them on at no profit to the manufacturer. OK, they do pass money back in the way parts, but only because they have to. No such similar thing exists for games, so it's hardly Games fault.

Game manufacturers are selling an item, not a service. Their business model must be based upon getting the maximum amount of profit out of that sale. LIke a clothes manufacturer. They know they must maximise their profit out of the initial sale. Second hand sales are irrelevant. If they want to be like a car manufacturer and take advantage of second hand markets, they should charge for support and updates (tricky, but not impossible).

Lastly, Game are not doing anything illegal, nor underhanded, they are running a business, and many people feel that new games are a rip off, so Game "ripping off" anyone shouldn't come as a great surprise, even though in my view they are not. It's called choice, if you don't like what Game do, don't buy it.

Geezer

 

Technically they do, releasing expansing packs and map packs etc via download is maximising their potential revenue, take Halo3 for instance the amount of online maps on the release disc was disgusting, yet low and behold a month or 2 later they release extra maps for around £7 same with COD4. Sure they lose money from 2nd hand sales, they always have done ever since the spectrum days, but now they have a new medium in which to sell their after after market enhancments.

And of course some of these 2nd hand owners will be buying the extra cars/maps/pics etc.

 

I download everything now, can't stand the clutter of cases everywhere.

 

I think the biggest problem with Pre-owned is the volume of profit they make, they'll give you £15 for a current game then it'll be out for £5/10 less than the RRP, it wouldn't hurt them to make a basic price system of %'s, say for every £4 paid they'll add £1, so if they gave you £12 it could be on the shelf for £15, along those lines rather than just doubling the price they gave, giving those who can't afford the release a chance to own recent games, problem is that it'll never happen cause the market is working in their favour.

Just my thought on the Pre-owned.

 

MS need a big dose of growing up!!!

cant they see, we dont want blu ray as a storage medium, we want to watch bl**dy movies.

A stand alone blu ray dvd drive ffs

prhaps an online petiton to MS


Mart

 

BBC NEWS | Technology | BBC and ISPs clash over iPlayer

If iplayer, with its ****ty resolution and framerate is causing problems, then just imagine what ISPs are going to say about MS's dream of mass distribution of HD content

 

true to a point, i dont know what game charge for trading stuff in, but i know that if i buy a full price game for say 40quid, and trade it in with in the month i will get around 25quid back from my local place.

you are always welcome to trade your older games away on ebay or admag or something!!

i dont think selling a second hand game to somebody thats 1 month old is going to make me more then 25quid to be honest!

 

Speak for yourself! If its not BR then we'll be back to the days of games on cartridges which will more expensive.

GhettoDude has a point - a lot of people don't want to spend full whack for a game, if a 2nd hand copy is out of the question - what are they going to turn to?

ans: Piracy. For the cost of 1 pre-owned game at say £30, you can have your console chipped and you're free to DL and play any game you want for the cost of a DVD-R.

I sell most of, and buy most of my 2nd hand games on AV Forums where you seem to get a better deal, and a lot of times its been a staight swap for something else, both parties being perfectly happy with no money changing hands apart from postage.

I think the quality of the goods you get are certainly better too - I used to get a lot off ebay, but most of them stank of ciggies and dogs...

 

Tried that, still no joy!

Every box is ticked for Realistic for all acts and chapters, the game sucks.

 

Did you play as the second player, get somebody else to host

 

Yup, tried it all, the game just sucks.

 

I would say valid statements there Iain, I think it is a chicken and egg, as Ed mentions if there was more investment this could drive up the quality of the games but at the current price levels of £40+ your average punter is going to take the cheapest option everytime.

I think what tees me off is that many games are average and the fact is because the publishers have done some mega-deal to licence a franchise, a name, a known actor this pushes up the production costs massively whilst not neccesarily delivering a better game. Sad fact is there seems to be little in the way of new ideas, just re-hashing and updating of existing ones.

I wonder how much Software Projects budgeted for Matthew Smith to write Manic Miner????

Of course 1 person doesnt deliver a game now, you see the credits for a game and its like a bloody film! Still how much does EA pay to licence all the stuff they do?

Gary