Possible source of game industry mutation?

[Zomg]

The Escapist managed to hide a good article in with the MMORPG and girl gamer pap this week: A Marginal Business

So right now Gamestop is soaking up money from running the secondary (console) video game market on gigantic margins. The video game publishers exist by selling games at the $50(ish) price point for a quarter, then dropping down, but that secondary market obliterates the second level price point for games, and probably erodes demand for those initial $50 purchases significantly (I haven't bought a console game for more than $20 in years and years, for instance, having placed myself behind that curve). Gamestop is a relatively small outfit, but those big margins are attracting bigger retailers to the secondary market that will likely chop down on the margins in both directions (price and repurchase).

This reads like a death spiral for the big console publishers. Not to mention games, since fewer and fewer broad, overt, pandering blockbusters (to concentrate marketing) will have to be hyped to heaven to attract those $50 purchases when everyone knows they'll be able to buy at $15 and resell at $10 in nine months, which will in turn cannibalize and shrink the market.

As a side note, this makes me think that there will be a return to Infocom-type collectible feelies (like a minted copper coin "from" a game's fantasy world) in game cases, to try to push geeks to get and keep the $50 versions.

 

[Drakron]

Actually no ... it just how they gain money from "buying" (not really, its store credit) a used game for 5$ to sell it for 15$.

The downfall of games is because the console videogame industry decided to cut gameplay hours for rental appeal ... I think right now the whole thing ends up being smoke and mirrors on the economical model that video games are being supported on, they simply cost too much and face too much competition to be able to sustain thenselves ... I bet that in the next 10 years they have to change their model or its the dot com crash all over again.

 

[Zomg]

Well, as the end of the Escapist article mentioned, the likely publisher strategy will be to shift to digital distribution, which we want (as niche gamers who don't want our favorite stuff having to fight with mainstream stuff for retail shelf space). They'll do so because they can then roadblock the buyer's ability to transfer his license which they couldn't do for a physical game.

If I had some capital I'd want to set up an anticipatory business to "launder" product keys and be a trustable third party. I would then offer, say, half purchase price for you to sell your license and product key to me, somehow force the original publisher to "destroy" that key and issue me a new one (this would require money for a legal fight, but I don't see how they could refuse), and then sell that new key at a lower-than-new price and live off the margin, and basically transfer the Gamestop model to the digital realm. That already goes on in an untrusted way through character selling in MMORPGs, possible because you get to sell a changeable password in addition to the product key.

I'm sure some Slashdot DMCA guru could fuck up that line of thought, but whatever.

 

[Proweler]

What happend to the idea of "Good games sell regardless"

This is just making medicore games sell good aswell. Making medicore stuff sell wich is what makes any economy run because it's so much easyer to make. Looking at that I think we are going to be buggerd for good games really soon.

Better save up those old games for your kids people.