Many of you loved Crackdown. I loved Crackdown, too. Maybe we should form a club. If we do form a club, Gamestop isn't allowed to join. Yep, once again a developer did not sell as many games as expected, and those evil, evil secondhand copies are to blame.
"With Crackdown we sold about 1.5 million copies, but even at that we pretty much only managed to break even," says Realtime Worlds boss Dave Jones. "It was due to the amount of factors that were out of our control as the developer, influences such as GameStop's amazing used-game sales; we know 1.5 million new copies were sold, but it's likely there were 2.5, three million sold when you include used."
To be honest, this kind of thing is expected. It's not like Microsoft exactly pushed the game out of the gate in terms of marketing, even with the Halo 3 beta key, so it's little wonder that people bought it used at a much later date rather than pick it up brand new. I personally think it says a lot more about the game's marketing than the used game market that not even a beta key was enough to make people take the risk on a new purchase.
Once again for those at the back of the class: The games industry is a business. Businesses have competition. Publishers need to man up and compete with used games, not just sit back and whine because they're not making an extra million dollars. I find it amazing how some of these businesses conduct themselves without mercy, morality or scruples of any kind, which I can appreciate, but then expect retailers and consumers to show them the sympathy they've never shown others.
It doesn't work both ways.
Contest:
8:20 AM on 07.16.2009
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Gamestop still being able to see Call Of Duty 4 used, 2 years and a sequel after it's release, for 2 bucks less than new.
That's a problem.
If it was multi-platform then it would have sold alot more.
...for $10 off of NewEgg a while back. Does that count?
I try not to buy used games. It's impossible to do when you can't find the game new anymore...but that's a given.
But if a company isn't going to give us a reason to buy the game new, some people are going to get the game used so they can save a few bucks. Take a look at what Atlus is doing; almost every game they are releasing comes with something. An art book, CD, a little figure. Throw something in with the game, people will feel more compelled to buy it.
I was honestly going to wait to buy Overlord II used, but when I heard they were including a minion figurine...I caved. I'm a sucker for free crap.
Speculation is rife in the industry of lost sales, but its just that, speculation. Unless you can prove that a customer would have purchased a brand new copy of a game instead, all this noise is moot.
In an ironic way, the games industry is trying to trap itself in a safe loop of new only games, similar to what Marvel and DC do in the comics industry, where its designed to nickel and dime us all. Sod that.
What he is forgetting that we may all be enrhusiasts but we are also consumers and if we can get a game for cheaper then we will regardless of how much sympathy or love we have for a particular studio.
Perhaps they should put games out cheaper from the off which would boost sales on well reviewed games AND undercut the difference in price between new and used. Given the choice of $20 for a copy covered in 12 year olds fingerprints or $25 for a new sealed copy then I know what I would choose.
Also if you need to ship 1.5 million copies JUST to break even then it is not used games that are to blame it's the size of teams that need to be adressed.
Poor bloke. Without a beat key and in the current economic climate I doubt that Crackdown 2 will fare even as poorly as Crackdown.
I refuse to pay £40 or even £50 for a game that I'm not 100% sure about. If I'm 100% sure, i'll pre-order and buy new but generally I check the used racks and pick up whatever takes my interest for like £10/£15.
it's like the piracy argument, "every download / copy is a sale lost" - It's not! Used sales are sales to people who will only pay a lower price for your product, at full price they generally wouldn't have bought it, so it's not a lost fucking sale because of used games, it's a lost sale because it's too fucking expensive!
I refuse to pay £40 or even £50 for a game that I'm not 100% sure about. If I'm 100% sure, i'll pre-order and buy new but generally I check the used racks and pick up whatever takes my interest for like £10/£15.
it's like the piracy argument, "every download / copy is a sale lost" - It's not! Used sales are sales to people who will only pay a lower price for your product, at full price they generally wouldn't have bought it, so it's not a lost fucking sale because of used games, it's a lost sale because it's too fucking expensive!
Are all of the developers at RealTime Worlds driving gold cars?
(Also isn't 1.5 million copies pretty good for a mediocre game?)
I hope for their sake they're not second-hand gold cars.
People buy used games because they are cheaper. Simple as that. You can't count used games as a lost sale if you had priced the consumer out of it in the first place.
I care not if you port Crackdown onto PS3, as PS3 owners get another cool game and you'll make more money. But don't go waving that used games bs around.
Do car manufacturers do that? "Oh hey we sold 500,000 mercury mystiques, but with used sales it would TOTALLY be 2 million." How would they even know? Game developers need to escape from this little dream world that they've conjured up regarding used game sales.
So, I'm with the "lower the prices" crowd, as well as the "offer extras with new copies" crowd.
I mean, i buy clothes from goodwill. Are clothing companies going to sneer and turn up their noses at me now? oh heavens no!
Yeah, guys, we know you want money - but then again, so do we. We gots bills to pay, and in the Western world, everyone's going to try and find the best price for the goods and services they want. If someone else is looking for that same good, and you have it yet don't want/need it, you're going to sell it to get a small bit of a return on the higher initial cost YOU paid - I mean, after all, you no longer own the game (or, I'm sorry, the "license" to play the game) and you're still out $60, so you might as well get something from someone else who is willing to take what you no longer have use for.
It's trade, man. I'm really not sure what the hell they want us to say beyond that.
I don't tend to sell my games on afterwards simply because I can't be arsed with the hassle of ebay and I don't think you really get a fair price when you trade games in to a shop.
Its entirely wrong that a company can sell 2-3x to the ammount of the game, and not pay anything to the developer for those sales.
Seriously. Calling out used game sales for your financial troubles rather than your astronomical development budget is really ignoring the elephant sitting on your bed. I thought one million was this major benchmark, a badge that signified out-of-the-ballpark financial success. Realtime Worlds is an independent studio and Crackdown was its first official game. How much money do they think they can throw around as an unproven developer? They need to seriously scale back.
Pawn shops don't have to pay anything back to the manufacturer or developers. Daddy's Junk Music, a store that handles in used music equipment in exactly the same fashion GameStop does games doesn't pay anything back and we don't hear music industry people bitching.
Fact here is, games is the fastest growing industry at the moment and there is a shit ton of money to be made, so naturally, people try to get their hands on as much as possible, and thanks to the corporate/capitalist environment that is america, they'll do it any way they can.
You want success in a capitalist economy, you compete. Sympathy means jack. Sorry.
If they want to compete with the used games market, they need to aggressively cut their prices at the right time and stop assuming that a 1+ year old game will continue to draw sales at $60.
I would be willing to bet that there are few people who will keep on buying at the current price. In effect, if they do this, they will be raising their prices on almost everyone during a deflationary recession. We can watch the tide roll out them then and there.
...and, if you take 1.5 million games, a hearty feat, to break even, then your business model is wrong. Period. This industry will collapse under its own weight; it has to with the current budgets and market fragmentation.
Well, it's also "capitalist America" that allows a person the free ability to trade with one another on those used products. There are downsides to the system for corporations, and this is one of them. I don't resent games publishers and developers for wanting to make money off their games (they've all got to live and eat, too, as well as have enough shored-up capital to continue putting out games for people to buy and enjoy); I do resent the idea that they should somehow be considered special and benefit from our capitalist economy, but not have to deal with the risks and pitfalls inherent.
I buy used books, too. I even buy used cd's sometimes, even though no one actually BUYS cd's anymore.
...I'm probably worse than a pirate though actually. :( I should be ashamed of myself and my consumer habits, they obviously don't support those poor megamillion developers -
I mean, how the hell is Denis Dyack going to complete his opus, the wonderful Too Human series - if everyone buys his first game used or not at all?
...Emphasis on the 'not at all'?
Buying used games = murder. What I described above happens every time you buy used....probably.
"The games industry is a business. Businesses have competition. Publishers need to man up and compete with used games, not just sit back and whine because they're not making an extra million dollars."
I could not have said it better. That is the reason the music industry has been killed...because it whined and cried about people illegaling downloading music over the internet and tried to take everyone to court instead of figuring out "What can we do to make it worthwhile for the consumer to buy the music".
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA
And Jim and wouldn't be to pussy to do it?
Please, he talks a lot of shit because nobody from the industry responds back to him.
I really enjoy reading his posts/rants for his energy and wit, but nothing is ever this one sided, and this is a huge topic..
I remember hearing my producer bitching about used game sales 10 years ago while we were doing PS1 games.. and it seems finally now, with DLC and other online tactics, He finally has ammunition to take on the issue of "used game sales".
I hear a lot of people talking about Capitalism/etc.etc. Without used game sales i dont know how well Gamestop will do, and we are heading there. Game Devs, and especially publishers arent neccesarily stupid about making money (well sometimes :) ). Systems are starting to get in place to make the use of a physical disc/media go away over time. Steam, OnLive, Gakai.. etc.etc.
I suggest Jim (or other Dtoid staffer) to, as many here have suggested, take himself on a little tour of EA, MSoft, Valve, then sprinkle in some smaller devs.. to all get their take on this situation. Dont get all your info at E3 when you have half of peoples attention, or from Press Releases...
set up some visits and have a little sitdown. I'd love to hear what you have to say after that.
Bingo.
I loved Crackdown, had an absolute blast playing through it twice, hunting for all the orbs and all that shit, but I bought it used, and I only decided to buy the DLC because it was on sale, so all in all, I spent less than 20 dollars for the complete experience. Awesome for me. Not so much for Realtime.
However, if I could have purchased the game new for around 20 bucks (over a year after it was released, mind you), they would have gotten my money. But I couldn't, so they didn't. Point being, those talking about aggressive price adjustments throughout the life of the title are spot on. Games stagnating at 40-60 buck price points when they're well past their prime simply will not sell.
You don't even need to give people one-time DLC out of the box or a swanky figurine (although those are fine incentives), just don't ask folks to pay 60 bucks for a 6 month-old game of negligible quality with 10 hours of gameplay and zero replay value. And if you do, don't dare whine when people sell it back to GameStop for a slight return on their purchase so that they can reinvest it in another game, possibly new to boot.
"just curious how much business and/or game industry (either developer or publisher) experience Jim has."
His points are relevant, regardless. The perspective of the consumer is the only applicable perspective here, as other industries have survived alongside secondhand markets for decades just fine. Frankly - and I mean this in the nicest possible way - it doesn't matter what pubs and devs think. They want more money. There is literally nothing more to it than that, so don't allude to supposed complexities that require firsthand knowledge of the business/industry.
Realising my error I picked up another new copy this year for $30...
So I've done my duty to Realtime Worlds =P
I'll be buying Crackdown 2 new as well ;p
I think digital distribution AT LOWER PRICE POINT is awesome.
His wife told his stepkids to not smoke, usually while smoking a cigarette. Guess what? they smoke.