In the first of a weekly opinion column Next-Gen.Biz editor-in-chief Colin Campbell takes a look at the trade that's costing this business over $1 billion a year.
Last week GameStop announced Holiday sales up 45%. Games retailers en masse are whoopin' it up, selling heaps of games. Which is wonderful for them, because, due to the lucrative used-games business they get to sell those little boxes of joy all over again.
The silent fury of publishers toward their retail "partners" is a palpable force in game industry politics. Retailers such as GameStop, with its powerful network of 5,000 frontline stores, are coining up to $1 billion a year in used game revenues in North America alone. Add Europe and you've got to think about almost doubling that number.
Publishers don't see a dime, nor even a eurocent of the money.
"INDIE Live Expo, Japan’s premiere online digital showcase series connecting indie game fans all over the world, highlighted more than 150 games during its Saturday broadcast introducing world premieres, new trailers, and updates during its 10th-ever digital showcase." - INDIE Live Expo.
"Following a great event in November of last year, DevGAMM Lisbon is coming back to the beautiful and sunny Cascais region to catch up with old friends, connect with game developers from around the world, hear from seasoned professionals, and have a great time all around." - DevGAMM.
A look into the sad trajectory of indie games from high successful releases to complete irrelevancy in just a few weeks or months.
That's the thing with gaming there's always new experiences to have why spend months or years playing a single game when there's a new experience right around the corner.
Indie or AAA if your building your game expecting long term player counts you'll probably be disappointed as gamers often enjoy something for a few weeks and move on only to return if it's truely a classic.
Out of all the generations I've experienced there's games from 30 plus years ago I still dust off and play like super Mario bros, earthbound, vice city and san Andreas being games I treasure and revisit every few years but I'm not going back to play a game designed to keep me engaged for months on end because it's also designed to milk my wallet in most cases.
Build a great game that people love make it playable offline and ask does it matter if the concurrent player count is under 100 a year post launch more often that not it doesn't
The price of entry is too high to take chances like I used to. Was looking at V Rising and that ranges from $50-$130 CAD. That’s a lot for an indie imo. By the time it goes on sale, the player count might be dwindling. But that’s the trade-off, I guess.
Because developers and publishers are so very very poor and need more money...
Tough sh*t. Wish my life was so hard where the biggest problem I had to deal with was who to cut to preserve profit margins.
Screw publishers and every money grubbing executive out there. You know what I say? The hundreds of millions that go into their pockets should be re-invested into the development process to provide better tools, education, and resources for their teams.
Who am I to feel sorry for? EA? Ubisoft? Activision Blizzard? LMAO, I think not. Damaging...yeah right.
1. New games are expensive. $59 is a lot of money.
2. Lots of games have very little replay value. Heavenly Sword was a great game, but at $59 and little replay value, it's a rent or a used buy.
If you make longer games with lots of replay value, people won't sell their games as much.
Just part of the business, publishers need to get over it and stop crying. You don't see Toyota crying when someone trades in their Camry for a Benz and then the Benz dealership sells it back to someone else. If everyone wasn't so damn greedy this wouldn't even be an issue.
EA, Activision, Blizzard etc may not need the money from the used game trade, but new developers do. Smaller companies trying to make a start in this industry aren't going to afford the advertising costs that they might need to promote their games so full price sales aren't going to soar.
Imagine picking up a game you've never heard of from the used games section, find out that the game is absolutely brilliant, then wait eagerly to pay full price for a sequel or another game from that company, but because they didn't get your money, you won't get the sequel you want.