There is one very important reason why you don't do this. Why you don't kill the Used Games market. It will result in far less sales... Why?
It may sound crazy but for every good guy like Batman, their must be a bad guy like the Joker.. Or else the superhero is pointless because he is not needed.
-I say that just to say this, -"it's a necessary evil.."
(Sometimes companies don't get this) But a lot of people would not buy a game if they could not re-sell it, hell just the other day I said I was not going to buy some game because I don't know if I will like it. -(but then I said well I guess I could always sell it if I don't like it) -Take that away- that option for consumers and you take away sales -
(I surely would have never bought that game if I would not be able to re-sell it)
I don't know if the big game companies get this or not, but - Used Games - believe it or not are a huge selling factor for Games.
How so, you may ask? Well think about this. Battlefield Bad company 2 sold a little over 6 million copies to date - But BF3 sold 15 million copies to date. You know why, used games. A lot of people who played Battlefield 2 bad company used bought BF3 New.. (people who never would have played it got exposed to it because they either got it from a friend or bought it used)
-you can't buy that kind of advertising- it feeds on itself it makes your game a word of mouth hit... then you add new people to the series and you end up with huge sales.. A game can't get that big without the Used Games Market. It won't happen, the sales of these games will be far less.
They will be stabbing their self in the foot. Someone wrote an amazing article about how movie privacy had increased the sales of movies.. (Sounds Stupid Right) Not really, if you think about it.. When a movie is good and it is pirated, it is exposed to a larger audience then it would normally have. Why?
A guy downloads No Country For Old Men off the net for free, he later buys the Blu-ray.. And he tells all his friends about how good the movie is and they should go see it, not all of his friends download movies - So some go to the theater to see the movie, and they buy the Blu-Ray later when it comes out. They use his review to decide what they go see. They would have never gone to see the movie otherwise.
The week Mega upload got shut down, movie sales shot down, why those people were no longer free advertizing. Word of mouth, is a huge selling factor for Movies. The free advertising went dry. In return Movies were not being talked about and spreading all over. So a smaller audience was exposed to the Product.
And if you understand sales then you know the more people who see your product the more people you have a chance of selling too. Less people exposed to your product = Less sales period.
Killing Used Games Might sound like a good idea in theory, but it will backfire big time in the game companies faces, as they will be force to having far less sales then they would have imagined. The effect of this will hurt smaller game companies.
A Game like Dead Island would not sell 5 million copies, it would not even do 2 million copies.. "Cause and Effect"
Consumers sales behavior, if you restrict a product you hurt yourself in the process, taking away the option to re-sell will stop some people from buying because they will not want to get burnt by a game that they can not re-sell -(so instead of trying a game they will pass) - that alone will kill 25% of your sales..
Not to mention loss of word of mouth sales, which will lead to another 15% in lost sales -your already up to 40% lost now? I can't believe Sony would be that dumb.. Microsoft sure, they have a bad habit of backing seriously bad ideas -(cough, cough Vista, HD-DVD) Let's just hope for there own good they just leave that on the cutting room floor.. Where it belongs.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
The charity event will be streamed live from Gamescom in August.
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Completely agree. There's games I wouldn't normally touch but bought at a cheap second hand price and now if there's a sequel I'm there first in the queue to buy them. Deus ex I picked up cheap and loved it, so will buy any future instalments full price. The list goes on and on.
If I can't do this next gen I will only go for titles I know I will enjoy.
The knock on effect is if consumers dare not take a risk it kills creativity, and we don't end up with titles like dishonored anymore but more COD sequels and the games industry will suffer big time as a result. It's madness.
If either block used games they will fail. Disc locked content is enough to get people standing up to these companies already. There are so many holes with this. In fact the idea of "always online" is flawed itself.
The fact that Edge reported it means there is a prototype that exists doing this right now. Or they wouldn't have been told that information. Even if Microsoft decide to back down on used games having a system always connected to the internet is asking for trouble as well.
If you are right by MS being this stupid then they are obviously under the assumption that support from companies will just cruise them to victory again but I have news for them. NO AMOUNT of support will get consumers to accept that BS!
Used games offer too much attractive potential DLC money, from people who wouldn't likely buy a game full price (if restricted to only that option) but might spend $10 to extend a game that they become addicted to, to pass up logically.
Then there's the fact that Wii U already released and allows used, making new systems without seem neutered.
Anyway, I said that people freaking out over anti-used rumors was stupid 2 months ago, was called a Ps3 fanboy because that's where the rumor was at the time, and I still feel the same way now; it's far from likely to happen and not worth panicking over (but worth making disapproval clear to make the decision even easier for the other 2 of the big three when finalizing their 8th gen systems).