Gameboi wrote an article on comments by Free Radical's David Braben about how the purchasing of used games hurts the industry as a whole.

My response:

Bullshit.

Has downloaded music hurt the music industry? Well, some would say yes, but it hasn't hurt it enough to shut it down or prevent crappy music from coming out in droves...

You want to know what's hurting the industry? 99% of games licensed after movies. Batman Begins? Catwoman? Fantastic Four? Please. I think that developers and publishers must take more responsibility for the products they produce. If every game had the quality of games such as the Half-Life series or Psychonauts, then I could understand why it is hurting an industry worthy of attention here.

The way I see it, gamers have always been buying second hand games. just not from a store. I had plenty of friends in the NES and SNES days that would trade games and/or sell each other games for less.

What is the real problem? Low quality games. They are lucky to be sold at all and to be perfectly honest, being able to trade in games is part of the reason questionable games are purchased at all! If you have a way to back out, through trading back in, albeit for less than half the paid price, some consumers are willing to take the risk. If this option did not exist, people would simply rent games.

Also, right now, you can purchase a used game from Gamestop and return it within 7 days for an exchange and again turn that game back in for another exchange, no questions asked. I have friends that do this on the regular until they hit a game they want ot keep.

Does anyone else feel that the purchasing of used games is not the bane of the industry it's being made out to be? Do you purchase new games over used if you know it's worth it?