In school there's been discussion about the growing sales of used games over new one, and growing concern over the lost sales of new games as a result. Ironically, I, who plan to be a game producer someday, am one of those contributing heavily to what many developers see as a major problem.
See I make a lot of my purchases based on politics. If it’s a Nintendo title I buy new. If it's a Resident Evil on Nintendo I buy new, if it's Square-Enix on Nintendo, or a new legacy of Kain on any system, or pretty much any trend, idea, or series I want to see continued I buy new. Most of my GCN games were purchased new because I think Nintendo tends to focus more on the art of games, where as Sony and M$ seem more concerned with the financial bottom line. That's why I buy most of my PS2 and Xbox games used. That's not to say I never buy new, I have, usually when the price point drops to about $20, but still!
It's not that I want to hurt Sony, or M$, it's just that I don't tend to enjoy the games that end up on their systems as much as I do Nintendo's.
That being said I don't have a problem with the idea that developers and manufacturers alike should get some kind of Royalty for the sale of used games.
I don't want to hurt developers by buying used, I just might not want to pay as much for Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volley ball as I would for Metroid Prime.
But also consider this. You can get some killer deals with used games, but you can also be in a situation where the used price is only a couple dollars different from the used price. Gamestop buys a game from you and resells it at double, or even triple what you get for it, so why can't they pay a small royalty on the used games they sell?
Say, for instance, you take Prince of Persia The Two Thrones and sell it to them for $15; they turn around and sell it for $45 because it's a fairly new game and they can. Why shouldn't they pay, say, $1.00 Royalty to Ubisoft? They're still making $29.00 profit on every copy that they sell for that price, and the used game still remains expensive for something second hand. See I usually pick up the $10-$15 used games, even though I want the new Prince of Persia, I don't have $50 just laying around, and I don't just have $45 laying around for a used copy either.
I think that Gamestop over charges for their used games as it is, and they definitely don't give you the best deal when you trade your stuff in. Usually smaller ma and pa game shops are the best way to go there. But with as much money as they are making robbing folks who trade their games in blind by paying not even a 4th of the games original retail value, then selling the used game for only a couple dollars less than the suggested retail price of a new copy of the same game, and with the huge amount of money they make off of this practice there's no reason they shouldn't pay a small royalty to the developers. That way we (the developers) aren't left completely out in the cold.