News - Second-hand gaming cost Heavy Rain one million sales

[HEXUS]

Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream reportedly lost one million customers to the pre-owned market.

Read more.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Big deal.

People have been playing second hand games for decades and now companies are moaning about it!!

[superscaper]

So they're equating 1 second hand sale to 1 lost customer. That's not at all the case unless they have something to back up that claim.

[Platinum]

Cry me a river, If I buy it, play it and finish it then choose to sell it on then that's my choice.

[Unique]

Big deal.

People have been playing second hand games for decades and now companies are moaning about it!!

the main difference is that in the last few years high street stores have started selling second hand games on the same shelves as new ones, so whilst before you had to go to second hand stores or use ebay, the primary outlets for selling games are pushing second hand games much harder as they can profit more from them. as a result of that, the retailers are profiting more and more and the developers are selling less and less

my mate is a programmer for one of the most well known games franchises and puts the points across well. personally, with things like piracy, bootlegging, renting, lending, stealing etc, my view is that is how the market is, and you enter the market aware of those things. whilst they do spend crazy millions on developing games, they can make many millions back. although not always. sometimes games lose money and even companies go bust, such as with APB

i probably would agree that 1 game resold would equate to 1 lost sale. i suppose you could say that person could have pirated or chose not to buy if it wasn't second hand. but then they could have pirated anyway, but didn't, and potentially could have bought when the prices inevitably get reduced as time goes on, so i'd say it was a relatively fair assessment

[mycarsavw]

I'm pretty sure making it a PS3 exclusive title cost them a-heck-of-a lot more than one million sales.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

the main difference is that in the last few years high street stores have started selling second hand games on the same shelves as new ones, so whilst before you had to go to second hand stores or use ebay, the primary outlets for selling games are pushing second hand games much harder as they can profit more from them. as a result of that, the retailers are profiting more and more and the developers are selling less and less

my mate is a programmer for one of the most well known games franchises and puts the points across well. personally, with things like piracy, bootlegging, renting, lending, stealing etc, my view is that is how the market is, and you enter the market aware of those things. whilst they do spend crazy millions on developing games, they can make many millions back. although not always. sometimes games lose money and even companies go bust, such as with APB

i probably would agree that 1 game resold would equate to 1 lost sale. i suppose you could say that person could have pirated or chose not to buy if it wasn't second hand. but then they could have pirated anyway, but didn't, and potentially could have bought when the prices inevitably get reduced as time goes on, so i'd say it was a relatively fair assessment

What about game rentals then?

How many music and video sales have been lost to second hand media sales,rentals and people taping stuff for the last 40 years or so??

If they have an issue with stores doing it(although for music and video this has been happening for decades) then they should moan at the stores.

However,many of these companies see it as an opportunity to stop all second hand sales and rentals too.

[crossy]

"We basically sold to date approximately two million units. We know from the Trophy system that probably more than three million people bought this game and played it," said Fondaumiere.

Or, to put a less favourable slant on things, two million bought the game, of which half subsequently either finished it and decided that it had nothing more to offer, or got sick of it and divested themselves of it to regain the shelf space. Being even more "anti" I'd quietly suggest that surely this is indicative of a game with a (very?) limited lifespan or scope - i.e. not one you'd want to "play again" either at higher levels or to try new slants on old missions.

Then again, I'm probably very untypical - for example I still give Just Cause 2 a spin now and again (just to try the new slants angle), and have a copy of Call Of Duty 2 that sees the light of day on occasion - and remember the latter is a game that's nearly six years old. (but still darned good fun - especially on modern PC's)

As a "recreational" gamer myself - or at least that's what my XBL tag says - I find the current moves by the publishers to kill off the second hand market quite irritating and/or annoying. As I've said before, I particularly hate the increasing use of one-off "bonus" codes that - if they were being honest - even the publishers themselves would admit, enable what are actually essential features. (I really wish the EU would look at this and agree with me that it's effectively a bar on free movement of goods).

As noted by others here, the publishers do appear to be trying to adopt Canute-like tactics - initially it was eBay then specialists like Game/Gamestation that did the trade in's. HMV (to my knowledge) started a year or two ago, and when I was in my local Asda last I note that they are now doing a play-or-trade scheme. So far from dying out (like the publishers want) the concept of trading in seems to be gaining popularity.

I suppose trying to explain to these aggrieved publishers that allowing second hand sales is a form of recycling would carry no weight? Presumably, their complaint is that they're seeing no direct money from that second sale.

[MSIC]

the rise of second-hand gaming. And I think this is one of the number one problems right now in the industry

This is one of the most offensive things that I have read for some time, regarding the tech world.

Selling and buying second hand games is, as far as i'm concerned, a right.
Admittedly with digital downloads this adds a whole new dimension, but if it were my choice I would most definitely allow the ability for even digital downloads to be passed to a new account.

For donkey's years people have been able to buy a book and then pass it on, which is a part of book-reading culture - I have never heard of anyone suggesting that this is close to 'stealing'.
The fact of being able to track this process quickly and digitally shouldnt change this.

[HSK]

What I hate is, the shops that buy these games off you for re-sale, usually offer you peanuts for it

[Roobubba]

They may have 'lost' somewhere between 5 and 10m euros in their words, but without hard data to prove how many of those second-hand buyers would actually have bought the game (and at what price) had they not bought it second hand, it's not really a valid statement to make.

Also there's the positive publicity for the brand: make a good game, and your next game will benefit. Reaching a larger fan base through second hand sales surely has some positive benefit - though I'd agree probably not completely enough to mitigate the potential 'loss' of sales.

Ultimately, though, they haven't lost sales, they just haven't made them!

Roo

[jim]

What I hate is, the shops that buy these games off you for re-sale, usually offer you peanuts for it

It's not that surprising really. Comparing the overheads to those of Hexus Classifieds or eBay, they're going to need to give rock bottom amounts to make any kind of profit. Especially when games' prices drop off so rapidly after the release.

[Dareos]

I bought and completed Heavy Rain, mainly based on reviews of how amazing this game is. After sitting through endless crap, uninspired story telling, nonsensical plot and waving the joypad around in an incredibly stupid manner, I shelved the game.

My point is this - If I go to a restaurant and the meal comes to my table cold, then I send it back and I get a fresh hot meal. If I buy any product and it does not serve the purpose it was meant to, then it gets returned. I cannot return a game to Amazon or Play etc and say sorry, just didnt like it, give me another. There has to be a way of mitigating these costs and trading games is one of them.

Personally I want the hours I spent on Heavy Rain waiting for it to get good or make sense back. Thats not going to happen. On the other hand I have spent several hundred hours on WoW, CoD,Halo, EQ and other games, and enjoyed every second of them, those games have never and will never be traded.


If they lost so much on that game, make a better game, it had potential and it was different, but next time I will read a mystery novel, at least then they tie up the loose ends the point of it all is usually clear.

[keithwalton]

As someone who buys games both new and pre-owned I thought i'd add my 2p in here.

The games industry should support 2nd hand games as its turnover, people wouldn't be able to buy as many new games if they didn't sell some of their old ones first.

As its been pointed out already a game being sold on 2nd hand is indicative of the game itself, where a game emphasises on storyline rather than game play once the storyline is over there is no drive or most of the time ability to continue and rarely does someone want to play the game a second time. Trading it in for a new game is only natural.

If a game focuses on gameplay and the storyline is a bit sucky but open ended you play the game over and over again and tend to keep it. Games like forza and gran turismo fall into this category.

The games industry could make a few changes to help themselves with this

1) Lower initial price and dont drop it off so quickly, this just shouts out that they start selling it at a high price because they think they can to people that are desperate to brag that they played / completed the game first.
I wont buy a game new (particularly the play once type) at £50 if in two months time its £30

2) Offer new buyers a bonus like dlc cards but don't make it so restrictive that it cripples the game for 2nd hand buyers

3) Have an incentive to keep on owning the game / playing it again. Such as expansion packs / extra missions etc.

4) Make it so a follow up is viable. If someone likes a game enough they will buy a 2nd / 3rd or a series because newer usually means better, I own forza 1, 2 and 3 and wont be hesitating on buying 4.

Personally I treat some games like a rental, I'll buy them second hand when the price has dropped to around £10, complete it at my own lesuire and then trade it in for store credit / another game and continue.
Playing games this way works out at about £5-10 per title.
So I end up playing at least 5x more games a year than I would of if I brought them all new.

I end up playing games I wouldn't of normally risked spending on and not enjoying. I have found a few games this way that are little gems and have kept them.

[Jay]

This is why I think Steam etc will take over the market and will will see games only on Steam more and more often. I have to be honest I normally only ever buy second hand games or discounted games unless I am really looking forward ot the game. The last new game I got was Fallout:NV.

The one thing I have to say is I would not have got NV at 12:01 on release day all full price if I hadn't played and loved Fallout 3 and I wouldn't have got Fallout 3 unless it was pre-owned so they actually got +1 customer from that. also, this is nothing new, when I was a kid I used to swap games at the local car boot sale (BBC Micro, Amstrad 464+ SNES etc)

[usxhe190]

If they think they lost 1 million customers, they should have just made their game an "install once" game.

Let's see how much customers they lose on that lol