The realities of what it costs to make high end consoles and games don't align with what gamers are willing to spend. If you think about it, it sums up the industry rather well.
If games stopped being profitable, we wouldn't have new barely-improved versions of sports games every year. I can't imagine the actual game design is all that expensive and the money rather goes to pay for licenses and marketing.
But that aside, we get a lot more buzzwords from developers and publishers (the dodging fishes was awesome) that genuinely don't add a whole lot of value. I remember Ultima 9, I believe, which had a persistent world. You could drop a gold coin somewhere and come back to it after doing a dungeon and it'd still be there. Really, who cares? When we talk about games that were fun to play, I'm pretty sure that feature never makes the cut.
Realistic graphics matter because they pull us into a world. But if a developer blows all its funds on the pretty graphics and fails to actually make the game fun, they should lose money in the process.
Szlia_sl said:
A car or a TV are objects that wear down when used. There is a huge market for used car, but for all intents and purposes, a used car is not the same product as a new car. With cultural products, especially of the digital kind, this is not the case. Unless you have a box fetish (or unusual tear and wear), a used game/DVD/CD is identical to a new game/DVD/CD.
There are plenty of used products that sell "Like New" and look exactly like that. TVs are a pretty good example, because I don't think it's very common to scratch it. Every TV I've owned looked like new on the outside when it died or I replaced it.
But I don't think it's true that games don't deteriorate. I think it's like TV Shows: DVDs are not a substitute for watching the show as it airs. There's a huge social component to gaming. Yes, I could buy Gears of War 1 today at a fraction of the original price. But it would be hard for me to get my friends to play with me. In fact, it'd probably be very hard to find anyone to play online with.
This is true to some extent with single player games. I like talking with my friends about games many of us play -- what we think about the story or a particular boss. That doesn't work if one of us gets the game 2 years after it's released. In that sense it's similar to a TV Show. It's fun to talk with your friends about the latest episodes, not so much about what had happened last season. The more people talk about it, the greater is the value of playing the game (or watching the show) to any individual gamer (watcher).
So why go with used games? They're obviously of value to people who don't talk about games with their friends. It generally doesn't matter that much if you play a game some months after it's released if you're just playing it by yourself. Moreover, the low cost makes it appealing to try and get into a franchise that you haven't gotten in from the beginning. Maybe just before the release of Gears of War 2, people bought the first part in the trilogy used to see if they'd like it. At that point, it's essentially promotional material for the sequel.
Last, but not least, used game sales are good for Microsoft. It lowers the cost of getting entertainment on the console, which makes the whole package more attractive. That, in turn, builds a customer base that can be monetized through the online system and even small in-game purchases. But more importantly, people buy used when money is tight and new when their income goes up and a $60 purchase isn't a big deal. So you can even think of used games like an equivalent to student discounts. They tie you into a product and when/if your income goes up, there's a good chance you'll buy games new. It's certainly better than if they hadn't bought the console in the first place and stuck with PC gaming or other forms of entertainment.
I really don't get why Microsoft didn't wait with this until they switched to downloadable games. Consumers are already used to not being able to resell their online products (Kindle Books vs. regular books as just one example, but also Steam or XBLA games) so that the transition would have been a lot easier. Now it's perceived as taking away a right that people had before and that's always a very, very bad idea. Never mind that the scheme, as described, just sounds awkward and ridiculous.
It'll be interesting to see what scheme Sony comes up with. If they end up not restricting the sales of used games, that could be a major advantage for them in this generation (and possibly beyond).
