Quote:
Originally Posted by addman
Good morning everyone! EA has had the same system for like 2 years already. The big publishers wants to kill the second hand market because they seem to think that they are loosing money from it.
|
Its a tricky one.
If you buy a second hand car the manufacturer doesn't getting anything out of it and no-one expects it to be any different, including the manufacturer. In fact their design/reliability concerns in part address the second hand market as it partly influences a potential buyer's re-sale possiblities.
However, this is the software world, usually one of licensing rather than selling and software doesn't deteriorate and need replacing except through eventual boredom. If a game is sold-on cheaply then understandably the distributor/developer is going to feel cheated out if a 'new' sale/revenue and you could hardly blame them for protecting themselves from what they might see as a form of piracy. The alternative might be to increase the original sell price to compensate for that.
I suppose one question is are you buying the software package with the right to re-sell or are you only buying a licence for your personal use?
I never bother with second-hand PC games because I buy so few. I don't use consoles but I can see that market has a high game turnover as those games seem limited in play-life and that's where I think most re-sale takes place.
I can see a reasonable argument for re-charge providing it is done carefully with no risk to the original buyer. How that is achieved is down to the distributors who will lose their business if they get it wrong.
I understand that most people want the most they can get for the lowest cost but the argument persists that if you cut off the hand that feeds you...........
The only other point I can think of is that if console games sales are prolific and high-return, two arguments present themselves:
The companies can afford to live with re-sale
or
The companies can enforce re-charge but could afford to reduce the original price and might be forced to by competition.
So, recharging could possibly reduce game prices.
Of course re-charging may drive down the price of a re-sold game, who would pay £15 and a £10 re-charge for a game they can buy new for the same overall price? But if the new game price is £40 and the second hand one is £15 + £10, they will still buy it. So perhaps there's a balance that will be found.