EA: Second-hand sales are a "critical situation"

Carlos wrote:The other reason the 2nd hand market is so prevailant is on the most part its the only way to get hold of a copy of a game 12 months after its release. Bugger me if I can find a new, untarnished copy of Excitetruck anywhere and under 20 Quid.

Retailers need to take the first step and lower prices. Remember back in the PS1 day when HMV and Virgin chopped the price of a new game down to £30? Sales went up and very rarely did anything new come out at a higher price point. If one retailer lowers the prices of peak Next-Gen games from £50 to £35 then publishers will have no choice to follow suit. £50 in this day and age for a 10-hour game is daylight robbery. Very few games have ever been worth that price, mainly only N64 games. Ocarina was worth every penny but has anything since really been worth that much?

Who pays £50 per game?
I thought £40 was the average price.

I try not to buy any game until it's available for less then £30 unless it's one I really can't wait to play.

IRON NAN wrote:

Carlos wrote:The other reason the 2nd hand market is so prevailant is on the most part its the only way to get hold of a copy of a game 12 months after its release. Bugger me if I can find a new, untarnished copy of Excitetruck anywhere and under 20 Quid.

Retailers need to take the first step and lower prices. Remember back in the PS1 day when HMV and Virgin chopped the price of a new game down to £30? Sales went up and very rarely did anything new come out at a higher price point. If one retailer lowers the prices of peak Next-Gen games from £50 to £35 then publishers will have no choice to follow suit. £50 in this day and age for a 10-hour game is daylight robbery. Very few games have ever been worth that price, mainly only N64 games. Ocarina was worth every penny but has anything since really been worth that much?

Who pays £50 per game?
I thought £40 was the average price.

I try not to buy any game until it's available for less then £30 unless it's one I really can't wait to play.

I thought most 360 and 3rd party PS3 games were £50? Or have they gone down recently?

Carlos wrote:

IRON NAN wrote:

Carlos wrote:The other reason the 2nd hand market is so prevailant is on the most part its the only way to get hold of a copy of a game 12 months after its release. Bugger me if I can find a new, untarnished copy of Excitetruck anywhere and under 20 Quid.

Retailers need to take the first step and lower prices. Remember back in the PS1 day when HMV and Virgin chopped the price of a new game down to £30? Sales went up and very rarely did anything new come out at a higher price point. If one retailer lowers the prices of peak Next-Gen games from £50 to £35 then publishers will have no choice to follow suit. £50 in this day and age for a 10-hour game is daylight robbery. Very few games have ever been worth that price, mainly only N64 games. Ocarina was worth every penny but has anything since really been worth that much?

Who pays £50 per game?
I thought £40 was the average price.

I try not to buy any game until it's available for less then £30 unless it's one I really can't wait to play.

I thought most 360 and 3rd party PS3 games were £50? Or have they gone down recently?

£40 is pretty much the most charged price for new titles on those machines at the mo.

Carlos wrote:Retailers need to take the first step and lower prices.

Actually, as an independent games retailer, I can tell you imeadiately that that is wrong. Suppliers need to take the first step in lowering prices. Every time you see video games discounted the retailer is, in fact, making a loss, (unless in the rare occasion that said product is being sold cheaply). In fact because of current price wars etc most retailers, ourselves included, don't make a huge amunt of profit on video game, especially a new release. The publishers & suppliers alike charge retailers with the train of thought that <insert any EA title here> will be sold at £49.99. The suppliers know that this is not the case but still charge the highest cost price so we only make anywhere between £1-2 on each title, unless of course we take the risk of not being comepetitive and sell at a higher price; like we did with Madden 09 where we still only made £7.00 per unit sold at £44.99. (Did you know that retailers only make about £30 on each £300 PS3 sold? It's actually 'zero' or a loss when you take into consideration bundle deals).

So, basically EA, and any other publisher whinging about the pre-owned market, can go fu*k themselves as they have made their money. Business it may be, but this is pure greed on their part, nothing else.

Who on earth buys £50 games ? With QUIDCO and vouchers so freely available, it possible to get most purchases under £30 these days.

Winckle wrote:

KKLEIN wrote:This is going to come down to broadband speeds at the end of the day. It's one thing downloading a track that takes about 30 seconds. It's quite another to download a 20GB game.

Eighthours wrote:EA's talking sense, to be honest. I think this is the first hint that it will be the first of the biggies to move solely to digital distribution when it comes to the next wave of consoles.

Widespread Digital Distribution is a long way off, yet. I can't see it happening that soon. The next batch of consoles are probably only about 3 or so years away.

The biggest game I have on steam is like 10GB, it's not as far off as you think.

With broadband speeds shooting up all the time, and the hard drives included with the next generation of consoles likely to be massive (there's no chance of an Xbox "Core" model without a hard drive next time, no chance at all), the launch of those consoles would be the ideal time.

I anticipate that the SKUs will be based on versions with conventional disc drives (Blu-Ray) and versions without any drive at all. All games will be released digitally, but there will initially be solid-state versions released alongside them at retail. The solid-state versions will gradually be phased out, maybe via inducements such as releasing the digital version weeks before the boxed version. Before long, solid-state would die completely.

Think of the way the PSP seems to be going, and apply that to the next home consoles.

mcjihge2 wrote:I have a problem when they call games IP, thats bullshit. They make the games and then it's a product on the shelf, and they charge £40 a piece for it. Its as simple as that. If they dont like it so much, they should leave the games business and STFU.

Compare it to the 2nd hand car market. Do the likes of Vauxhall get the hump when a car they sold as new changes hands as much as 3 or 4 times in 10 years? No. They sold their product to a customer, picked up their money and left it as that.

Publishers are just looking to maximise their profits at whatever cost. I never like to be dictated to on how I buy a game, so it will never work in EA's favour to mistreat the customer.

I've never ever bought a second hand game, but many people never buy a brand new game and rely on playing used games. To take this away will be disastrous to the industry.

I just can't see the mass-market adopting Digital Distribution as soon as some think they will. The hardcore will, sure...but Wii owners? Children (as parents watch their credit cards get spunked up the wall)?

Eighthours wrote:With broadband speeds shooting up all the time...

Marketing spin used for adverts.

up to 16MB. 8GB monthly usage allowance applies. Speeds may be capped at peak hours.

ISPs are on their knees as it is. Watch something on the BBC iPlayer & they're up in arms about bandwidth. Until everything gets an entire refit, this isn't taking off.

It's strange how you never hear Film or music producers talking about the problem of second hand sales, which must be pretty high as well.

KKLEIN wrote:I just can't see the mass-market adopting Digital Distribution as soon as some think they will. The hardcore will, sure...but Wii owners? Children (as parents watch their credit cards get spunked up the wall)?

Eighthours wrote:With broadband speeds shooting up all the time...

Marketing spin used for adverts.

up to 16MB. 8GB monthly usage allowance applies. Speeds may be capped at peak hours.

ISPs are on their knees as it is. Watch something on the BBC iPlayer & they're up in arms about bandwidth. Until everything gets an entire refit, this isn't taking off.

Yeah, we gotta wait for fibre optic cables before the next big increase.

Steve wrote:

mcjihge2 wrote:I have a problem when they call games IP, thats bullshit. They make the games and then it's a product on the shelf, and they charge £40 a piece for it. Its as simple as that. If they dont like it so much, they should leave the games business and STFU.

Compare it to the 2nd hand car market. Do the likes of Vauxhall get the hump when a car they sold as new changes hands as much as 3 or 4 times in 10 years? No. They sold their product to a customer, picked up their money and left it as that.

Publishers are just looking to maximise their profits at whatever cost. I never like to be dictated to on how I buy a game, so it will never work in EA's favour to mistreat the customer.

This I agree with entirely, if EA starts treating it's customers like idiots then they'll be in trouble.

Regarding your comparions to car manufacturers, most if not all of them do run their own approved used vehicel sales. Plus a lot of car manufactuers now are starting to wis eup to the fact that not so many people buy cars new because today's cars last longer then the ones they used to sell.