http://www.kenniffonline.com/the-profits-game/
Does buying used games hurt the videogame industry?
Don’t you think that retailers who trade games (like Gamestop) are unfairly profiting from games instead of developers when they resell used games?
Would you sell or buy used games if you knew that it lowered the quality of future games by cheating the developers out of profits from new game sales ?
Publishers definitely make that argument all the time. But I really don’t think that it has all that much of an effect. The used game market lets specialty games retailers survive on tiny profit margins for new games. If it weren’t for that, they’d have to charge extra for all new games just to pay the bills.
Also, it would be difficult to buy games cheaply after they’ve been out a while, which would limit the games that the average person would buy. This would then also hurt the chances of that customer paying full price for a sequel.
Overall, I think it’s a wash, and the only change it really has on the industry is that it increases the problems we always have had with sequelitis.
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