One of the most vital parts of the gaming industry, a part of it that the game companies cannot live without, is slowly but surely killing it from the inside. Gamestop. It has been going on for years, and it is a slow process. What are they doing to kill the game industry? you ask. They are selling used games.
Ok. Here is how it works. Gamestop encourages people to buy used games over new ones by selling them for slightly cheaper prices than a new version of the game, saving the customer money. Because they actively encourage the sale of used games, they sell more used games than they sell new ones. As used game sales go up, new game sales go down. This is a good thing right? We are getting games at a cheaper price, right? That's good in theory. The problem comes into play when you take into consideration that the game companies do not make a dime from the sale of used games.
Think about it. PRoduction cost of video games is steadily going up. Companies spend millions of dollars to bring you a high quality game. If 500,000 people buy the game and return it, it winds up being that 1,000,000 people play the game, and the game company only gets the money for half of it, which makes it harder to cover the cost of producing the game in the first place. If said cycle continues, it will only crumble from the inside.
Now I know what you are thinking. Why don't the game companies go to Gamestop and get a portion of the used game sales? Do you honestly think Gamestop is going to be willing to do that? At this point, most of their profit comes from the sales of used games. By dividing that money among the companies that make the games, their total profits go down. Gamestop will just laugh at the companies making the games, and the companies that make the games NEED Gamestop. They make up for a large percentage of the sales side of the industry. The companies could not survivew without Gamestop, so Gamestop has the power to enforce their will to hog all the profits for themselves.
There is one other possible solution. Game companies can start making money via downloadable content. As they put more and more of the game up as downloadable content, or put the entire game up as downloadable content, they will be making back the production costs again. You can already see a slow veer toward downloadable content with fully downloadable games like The Watchmen: The End is Nigh and modes that would have been standard 2 years ago being sold as downloadable content, such as the competitive multiplayer mode for Resident Evil 5.
Think about this for a second. If the majority of the games go downloadable content, it will mean a severe shortage of games being traded in. The amount of used games that GAmestop has will drop drastically. This will hurt Gamestop's profits, which could potentially do damage to the gaming industry as a whole.
How do we stop this cycle? Well, that is an easy one. Buy new games. That is the only way to ensure that the game company gets money for the game you bought. PReorder people. If you think a game is worth the cash, preorder it. That is the best way to go about it.
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