Be Excellent To Each Other

Still racing about after submitting so not posting properly here at the moment.

But just had to voice my annoyance at the announcement that GoW2 would ship at launch with a code that let you download 5 multiplayer level packs for free.

Which idiots all over the internet have proclaimed as being awesome. I've been very tempted to try and prove the internet wrong which never works and I haven't the time for it, so I thought I would moan here to get it out of my system.

So they've booted content off the disk, and onto my increasing tiny hard drive in order to make extra money of the second hand market (who will of course have to pay for the content).

So to summarise, they want to kill the second hand market and in this attempt to do so they've managed to:

• Hurt early adopters by wasting their hard drive space.
• Hurt early adopters by splitting the multiplayer base over haves and have nots unnecessarily.
• Hurt early adopters by reducing the amount of players in the game late into it's life when the 2nd hand market people pick it up for cheap and keep their servers alive

Absolute cunts.

I fucking loathe this idea that the 2nd hand market is evil. And it's clear that a huge amount of DRM bullshit is actually to further kill the 2nd hand market.

I love this idea that if I can't get 2nd hand games they think I'll start dropping £50 on games (whilst we're in fantasy land we might as well stick with their fantasy RRP here too), rather than you know just not buying anything anymore - and totally not fucking about with the Xbox 3.

And before I end this rant, it's FUCKING DEPRESSING how many people in #viewcomments" class="postlink">the kotaku story comments about this were GLAD that it killed of the second hand market. GAH!

So Bezzies how much am I over reacting here? Or am I in fact noticing a hideous, hideous new trend (e.g. the 20 free extra songs on Rock Band 2 in you get it new).

Considering I tend to make my living on the games second hand market, anything that hurts me is definitely a bad thing.

Thing is, I reckon the second hand market keeps the new market alive because people can trade in second hand games for brand new. Less brand new games would go if people couldn't trade their old stuff for it if you ask me.

I don't see how this will kill the second hand games market, surely it would just affect the resale value of affected titles.

These are just the multiplayer maps from the first game, aren't they? I think the whole point is to encourage people to buy the game new and not pre-owned (as anyone buying it pre-owned can pretty much guarantee the code has already been used).

I think that anyone buying it new (no matter how far into the future) will still have that code.

-edit-

Anyway, this is not a patch on that knitting scandal.

It's a little trite but.

Let's ban 2nd hand car selling tomorrow, how many extra new cars do you think they'd sell?

If you ban 2nd hand games somehow you'd lose the indie game shops instantly, you'd probably lose Blockbuster from the games market, you'd leave GAME with a massive majority with only the faceless HMV and Zavvi to battle the supermarkets (and none of those 4 sell a lot of new consoles). GAME themselves would take a massive revenue hit and would almost certainly react by only stocking the same core range as the others do.

Games have a 2nd hand market this strong because games are expensive and people DO trade. Music has a 2nd market but it's not as strong because there's rarely a point trading when a new album can usually be had for £8-£10 if you're smart.

Trading itself wouldn't affect me, but it WOULD lead to a rise in new game prices because used games are competition and because several stores no longer would be. You'd also see publishers much less willing to discount games, you certainly wouldn't be seeing your £20 Too Human and probably not your £30 Fifa09 right now.

Also the margin available to retailers for the brand new games is really rather miniscule. I can't actually buy (for example) FIFA 09 from a supplier for anywhere near a sensible price. It's often cheaper to go to Tesco and buy them there.

I don't really trade games in any more - I did it once (on my PSX) and regretted it until I bought the games again. Without wanting to upset people like Nirejhenge*, I think the second hand games market can, in it's current form, fuck off, chiefly because of places like Game that pay a fucking pittance for trade-in's and then sell them for £4 less than the brand new versions. That's ripping off the consumer.

*Do you pay more than Game, or do you find you don't need to?

Correct, I'm almost positive Tesco are losing money or (given the weird price) possibly breaking exact even on Fifa09. It, like a lot of supermarket things, is to get people in.



If that was the whole story you'd be right, but they're taking on a lot of risk and paying VAT. You're making the assumption there that all copies sell for that price and don't say, hang around for month or not sell at all. Usually they're paying £20-£25 trade for a very new title and given you can usually pick them up for £35 new it's not massively toxic.

Yeah I've bought games, had them for a month or two and then traded them in at the same shop and it's ended up costing me about ten quid. I've never used Game for that though as Gamestation always seemed to offer better prices for trade-ins.

Going back to the game in question, I really don't see a problem with early adopters getting a little bonus for buying the game new. It's no different to bands releasing albums with fancy packaging/bonus stuff to encourage people to buy it rather than download it for free.

I think Laves point is that people buying it second hand will lose out on content.

That content won't be worth anything like as much as the saving they'll make buying it second hand though.

I pay about half what I think I'll get for a game on the net. It's not as easy as you might think with the whole pay a pittance and sell for lots thing. A pretty high margin is necessary because I find that personally I don't get enough turnover, even at lower prices.

I'm pretty cheap on my sell price but that does make my buy price even lower. I'm not sure what prices game offer but I'm pretty sure they don't really compete properly like Gamestation and other independents. They never have in the past.

Examples of how I'm cheaper than other people:

Call of Duty 4 from me £25. CEX - £38, Playtime - £35, Gamestation - Er not sure actually but it was at least £30 last I checked.

I have to find ways to compensate for the games that don't sell and make a bit of a loss. Such as the Beijing Olympics game. I've got around 84 different titles in on the 360 and about 5 titles have quite a few copies in stock On average I sell maybe 15 360 titles a week, and that's with being cheaper than the competition

CEX make it quite difficult to buy in quality games with their insane prices. Offering more money for a game than it is brand new. Of course they never have the money to buy here in Doncaster but people refuse to take lower amounts because of the offer.

My margin on a £30 game is usually about £10. But then it usually is on a £20 game purely because it's likely to sit there a lot longer.

I understand that, which is why I hope that they'll have to sell GoW2 pre-owned at a lower price to factor that in.

I personally think it's good that the developers/publishers are getting creative with regards to trying to get people to buy the game new. If you can't afford it new when it comes out, why not wait 3-6 months and pay preowned prices for it then, including the GoW1 maps?

***DISCLAIMER*** I buy both new and pre-owned games, so don't think I've got anything against the pre-owned market, as such.

I guess the further point is that what if this is the start of a trend where more and more content is declared to be "bonus" and "exclusive"? Such that buying a game second-hand only gets you half of it and you can't even buy the extra bits for a reasonable price.

It's a shitty situation.

Buying new, but waiting until prices drop would be the best bet then, I tend to do this most of the time these days.

But the GoW1 maps aren't part of the GoW2 game, it's an added bonus for people who buy the game brand-new (as far as I can tell). You wouldn't think anything of it when buying a second-hand CD that came with a code to get bonus videos or whatever from a website if it had already been used.

I wouldn't think of buying a CD to be honest mate.

Exactly. I'm really drinking Devil's Advocaat here, but if you really don't want to pay full-price, why not wait? It's not like there's a dearth of good 360 games at the moment.

Until your console's hard drive is filled entirely with "bonuses".

It's ok, I've got a 120GB one.

The only problem with a purely new market is it would probably force independents out of the market and it would be purely owned by the big companies due to their ability to buy in bulk. It probably wouldn't mean much to the games industry though.

I'm not talking about a purely new market, however. All I'd expect is for shops to have to sell GoW2 pre-owned at a more sensible price, as opposed to £37 or whatever ridiculous it is at the moment. If they don't, then people wouldn't buy it (or shouldn't, anyway).

You should all shop with me and my more sensible prices.

I like paying 25 quid or less for games.

Where's your shop then?

A lot of the games I buy are pre-owned. All mine are PC, as I don't own a console yet

EA can be a pain with that, as the codes are already used.

But after a little persuading, they gave me new codes.

And do you sell online?

I don't have an online shop but I sell on Amazon occasionally. Naturally I've not got what you want in stock but you can have 5 copies of fifa 07 for less than £25!

How much for one copy?

If you had an online shop I'd buy from you.

Can't you just PM me with your game request and I can see if i have it in stock?

I've got all on just running my Amazon shops.

Also I only sell FIFA 07 in multiples of 5..

Well not really but I'd be looking at about £3.99 delivered.

Tossrstu has already enjoyed my quality service (and Grim.. too actually)

I like to browse.

I'll set up a webcam.

Brilliant. Can you make it so I can operate it via remote control?

That would be awesome. I demand an ecommerce website where I browse by remote controlling a robot, driving around a real physical shop. The inefficiency alone makes it compelling.

Let's do it! We can even send wafts of BO down the line and have your robot rudely shoved out of the way by other robots when it's kneeling down having a look at something on the bottom shelf.

Sounds like a plan. Okay how do I make a remote controlled webcam?

Using a webcam and a remote control.

You buy one.

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I was thinking more along the lines of this.

Will one of these do:

Too gay.

Any better?

Not gay enough.

Better?

Too gay. Dial it back a bit.

Hmm?