As Recession Deepens, Used Games Get More Painful on Gamasutra is another
analysis of used game sales, quoting developers and industry analysts expressing
more of the now-familiar consternation over the impact of pre-owned game sales
on the industry. The article quotes a survey suggesting these sales will
increase, saying: "According to his survey of 2,000 gamers earlier this year,
one in four buyers who hadn't bought any used games in the past year says they
plan to buy a pre-owned game in the next 12 months." Significantly, that survey
was conducted before the global financial crunch hit, so the numbers quoted
could be an underestimation. One of the developers quoted heavily in the report
is Frontier Developments' David Braben (
Elite), who takes issue with used
games, saying: "What the used games are doing is forcing publishers and
developers to incur bandwidth costs for updates and support at least twice --
once for the game's first owner, then again for the owners of the used
versions." There's also a portion
excerpted
separately where Braben claims that used game sales are a disincentive for
quality: "Five years ago, a great game would have sold for a longer period of
time than for a bad game -- which was essentially our incentive to make great
games, but no longer. Now publishers and developers just see revenue the initial
few weeks regardless of the game's quality, and then gamers start buying used
copies, which generates money that goes into GameStop's pocket, nobody else's."
Following up on that, they cite research indicating that single-player and
action games drive the resale market, while games with a multiplayer component
tend to be held onto the longest.