Many publishers have been claiming to be losing out on sales to Pre-Owned versions of their own games.

To me this draws parallels with the music industry whinging about piracy, all the while offering no reasonable solution to the problem. The music industry finally embraced the online distribution channel and have managed to make quite a bit of money of it (£7 for selling a product with no variable overhead).

The gaming industry does have its own online distribution channels , but I think there may be a better way of preventing these preowned sales that has been overlooked. As it stands Console publishers encourage rereleases of old games under a Platinum/Greatest Hits/Dog Bollocks labels. But what they failed to have seen is that they are rereleasing a game at a price that is double that of an existing pre-owned product.

So my magnificent idea is incremental devaluation of the product by the publisher, not the game store. An example is in order.

Gears of War 2 is comiong out in a few weeks, at a price point of £40, I simply cannot afford this sum so I will wait for a pre-owned game.

But then, in around 2 months time whem the Pre-Owned copy of the game is knocking about for £25 - £30, Epic rerelease the game at a price point of £25 new. They will not be losing much money because the costs involved in producing and distributing a DVD are not directly reflected in the price.

This could work because at this point no-one is going to buy the game at full price, so they will go pre-owned. Then after 6 months the game could be rereleased again. This time as a DVD only pack. Bundle the game in a jewel case with just the DVD and sell it for £10. This will completely devalue the pre-owned market and help publishers retain more of their sales.

I don't buy preowned games because I want a disc that a 14 year old has used to pleasure himself, I do it because I cannot afford the full priced alternative, which is full priced for no reason.

I understand that game stores will be less than accepting of this method, but perhaps they could be offered a larger share in the rereleased versions. It frustrates me that publishers complain about an issue but make no attempts to rectify it. Just smacks of a spoilt child whose thrown all their toys out the pram

Also does anyone remember a news story from about 5 years ago talking about game stores being able to burn discs in store to save on distribution costs.