In the first of a weekly opinion column Next-Gen.Biz editor-in-chief Colin Campbell takes a look at the trade that's costing this business over $1 billion a year.
Last week GameStop announced Holiday sales up 45%. Games retailers en masse are whoopin' it up, selling heaps of games. Which is wonderful for them, because, due to the lucrative used-games business they get to sell those little boxes of joy all over again.
The silent fury of publishers toward their retail "partners" is a palpable force in game industry politics. Retailers such as GameStop, with its powerful network of 5,000 frontline stores, are coining up to $1 billion a year in used game revenues in North America alone. Add Europe and you've got to think about almost doubling that number.
Publishers don't see a dime, nor even a eurocent of the money.
New report from Skillsearch found that 22% of those surveyed had been laid off within the past 12 months.
It's a step forward for Stop Killing Games.
The Callisto Protocol director thinks the solution involves the right people, the right timing, and perhaps a little bit of AI
I don't agree with that. I WISH I could agree with that. But buying habits and customer opinions prove otherwise
We've seen developers in the AAA space try new things and ideas. More often than not, the customers aren't willing to give things a chance, or not enough people buy into the project for it to grow.
Creativity works better in the indie space because the budgets, pressures, and expectations aren't the same.
it's a nice idea and it worked during the PS2/PS3-era when AAA didn't cost hundreds of millions of dollars. smaller budgets and shorter development time left room for more creativity and more risk. a game didn't need to sell 4 million+ copies to break even. things are different now.
This is the guy who bragged about crunching his staff and having them work through the night. Crunch culture has lost more talent and done more damage to the industry than any other factor. Screw him.
Because developers and publishers are so very very poor and need more money...
Tough sh*t. Wish my life was so hard where the biggest problem I had to deal with was who to cut to preserve profit margins.
Screw publishers and every money grubbing executive out there. You know what I say? The hundreds of millions that go into their pockets should be re-invested into the development process to provide better tools, education, and resources for their teams.
Who am I to feel sorry for? EA? Ubisoft? Activision Blizzard? LMAO, I think not. Damaging...yeah right.
1. New games are expensive. $59 is a lot of money.
2. Lots of games have very little replay value. Heavenly Sword was a great game, but at $59 and little replay value, it's a rent or a used buy.
If you make longer games with lots of replay value, people won't sell their games as much.
Just part of the business, publishers need to get over it and stop crying. You don't see Toyota crying when someone trades in their Camry for a Benz and then the Benz dealership sells it back to someone else. If everyone wasn't so damn greedy this wouldn't even be an issue.
EA, Activision, Blizzard etc may not need the money from the used game trade, but new developers do. Smaller companies trying to make a start in this industry aren't going to afford the advertising costs that they might need to promote their games so full price sales aren't going to soar.
Imagine picking up a game you've never heard of from the used games section, find out that the game is absolutely brilliant, then wait eagerly to pay full price for a sequel or another game from that company, but because they didn't get your money, you won't get the sequel you want.