The real problem when you look at pre-owned sales is that people are comparing the situation with other industries. But when you're buying a game you're buying both an item and a service. People are forgetting that, and they're expecting the service again.
It's a bit like when you buy a new car and you get a warranty for a year. If you buy a second hand car it would be classed as dodgy if you were to somehow then disguise the car in a way that the manufacturer had to provide their warranty again. It's not dodgy in our industry, however. The problem is that we've seen a lot of revenues drop and I do appreciate that retailers are having a hard time as well. Just looking at the whole picture, pre- owned itself isn't a bad thing -it's really just how it's currently being implemented. Essentially, pre-owned is rental. This briefly happened in the DVD market, but now DVDs of xbox 360 games list have a different SKU that's allowed to be rented which is much more expensive. That approach could be the trick. We could do something similar and have a not-for-resale SKU - because I, for example, like building a collection - and those could be a lot cheaper. Then everybody is happy. The people who essentially want to'rent' the game can then do so, because when you're buying and trading in, all you're really looking at is the difference in price between the new price and the second hand price. At the moment users are really being gouged by that difference.
We just need to change. There's a benefit to pre-owned games, but the pre-owned market has got to be equitable and at the moment it isn't.
No comments:
Post a Comment