Hooray UK! There are great minds at work here.

North America should follow suit

I wish consumers' opinions mattered more to the publishers as well, because despite how many people differ in opinions, those codes are undeniably controversial.

I don't particularly think used games sales should be shared, but if the retailers are the ones offering it, then I'm excited at the prospect of this coming to fruition!

Well, that's an encouraging attitude!

Looks like we're about to see an exponential increase in the amount of retailer specific DLC :/

You mean EA, Activision, THQ, and Ubisoft might not be the unequivocal good guys?

I don't know about big retailers, but shopto dot net manages to strip at least £5 off of a game's highstreet prices, and i actually set up a trade account with a games distributor once, a good few years ago (around the launch of the original Mafia) there was plenty of room for margin if you could sell at full retail price.

But I would certainly prefer retailers to share used game profits rather than publishers putting these bloody pass codes in.

Although retailers aren't all innocent.

Battlefield 3 for example, my pal bought it used at GAME to save £4 on a new copy at a supermarket (he's like that, will spend £4 in petrol to save £4). Online passes weren't mentioned ANYWHERE and to buy one costs about £8 (AFAIK) thus making a used copy more expensive than a new one.

Retailers need to KNOW and take into account online passes. If that were the case I would be totally happy with them. It's when the clerk says "I don't know, it might need an online pass? But they're only like £4." when they actually cost in some cases double that.

In fact, I was killing time at Blockbuster the other night (played Starfox on a 3DS - it was quite cool actually and my eyes can handle it fine) and asked about Tiger Woods 12. The store manager actually said, and I shit you not...

"I reckon you can buy one pass for an EA game and use it for all of the EA games" (thus completely removing the purpose of online passes)

Fucking idiot.

This... This is incredible

Publishers aren't fail to retailers at all. I don't know what the price is if you get games direct from one, but from a wholesaler the wholesale price is usually $54.99. So you make a whopping $5 on a brand new game.

Translation: Being aware of the inevitable death of our cash cow, we are willing to cede a small amount of our margin now, to shore up better margins in the future after our services have been largely marginalized.

Can't say I blame them for trying.

Fair*

The publishers won! They made enough of an impact that retailers are begging for increased margins.

Is this a good thing? If this "deal" actually happens - it benefits us, so yes. But ultimately it shows how much power these publishers have.

0.0......

(Stands up and claps slowly)

Wow, I never expected retailers to say something I agree with! Sounds reasonable as they're willing to deal with the publishers, which is a courtesy that publishers don't seem to have extended to retailers. I refuse to bu new at retailers because the prices are so over inflated compared to online which are expensive enough as it is. I'd buy more from brick and mortar stores if they gave me prices on par with online or better.

I didn't think people every expected retailers to get good deals on new games from publishers...like ever.

True. Retailers make hardly anything on new game sales. If it weren't for the used market, GameStop wouldn't even exist.

Overall, I think publishers need to look more closely at the way they price their games. Just pumping everything out at $60 is obviously a bad idea for some games. I mean, which game seems more worth $60: Rayman Origins or Skyrim?

They're both awesome games, mind you, but $60 for a quirky platformer with a second-tier (at best) main character is a hard sell to your average consumer.

It's all well and good and heartwarming to see this good-will quote given to a journalist, but don't we need some sort of official request or motion or whatever to even give this a possibility of becoming a tangible thing?

Maybe if the retailers *actually* band together and contact the publishers as a consortium or something. Quotes from blogs aren't gonna get anything going on this.

I'll repeat what others have said- retailers don't make much on new games. I used to work at Best Buy, and employee prices were supposed to be "cost" + 5%, (where "cost" was a little arbitrary because they included transport to store and store labor into "cost" and didn't say how) and console games would be $52-54 depending on the title. Taking out the 5% and a little more for the cost padding, that would mean even a retailer as big as best buy likely pays $45ish for games, which seems good until you think about how much sale prices must hurt when they drop a game to $40-45 a week or two after release. That said, I wouldn't shed a tear for best buy, but if that's as low as they can get it, I can't imagine that independent and smaller retailers do much better, and that can strangle their business.

I... see no problem with this.

I've kept telling people what a pittance retailers get for selling games new, but they're dumb enough to buy into the sob stories of publishers and their developer puppets.

When you do the math, selling games new isn't sustainable for most chains and store because they don't make enough money off them. Its been this way since the 80s. The used market is a necessary evil that publishers forced retailers that weren't megachains to create.

Gamestop doesn't get the bulk deals and rain checks that Wal-Mart, Best Buy and target do. And now that Wal-Mart and Best Buy are looking into used, one has the face the plausible raality that publishers are now strongarming them and giving them less as well.

Video games are bigger than Hollywood and publishers are letting it go to their heads. Its not good way to be when price is being redefined, but on they go trying to secure more money for themselves while retailers and consumers get less and less.

The publishers then replied: "You give us part of your profits fist, and then we'll lower the cost and remove online passes."

I think this is a bad thing.

Even though Gamestop seems to has found a way to get around it for the moment I'm still optimistic passes could force used retailers to drop the price of used games to what a 2nd hand unit should cost. In a time when you can buy a brand new game (I just bought Saints Row 3) for $29, no one should pay more than $9 for a used game.

If people would just stop paying $55 dollars for used games it could happen. If retailers are begging for a deal like this it might mean it is happening.

If a deal like this goes through it will make it easier for used retailers to keep their prices fluffed up to ridiculous levels.

I'd want to see how this develops first before I say it's a good or bad thing.

I worked at a small game store for 5 years and when we ordered a new game that we sold for $50, the store owner paid around $45 for the game and only made $5 on it. If the game didn't sell and he had to drop the price at all, he almost always lost money.

Obviously the much bigger stores get better deals when they order in bulk, but everyone should remember that the retailer is your friend. The publisher is almost always the enemy.

Retailers are the ones who are cutting prices far more often than publishers are, and this is when they even lose substantial money on it. The publishers don't lose any money because they already sold it to the retailer. Retailers create millions of jobs. We are in a service sector economy in case you didn't notice. The truck drivers, the cashiers, the managers, and on and on and on.

The day you all allow publishers to gain exclusive control over gaming with digital distribution is the day gaming as we know it dies. If you think that everyone is going to conduct themselves on consoles in the way Steam does, you are out of your mind.

I had a friend who worked at Superstore (Canada) and said that they sold new games only around $5 dollars above store cost. When you take that into consideration it's a no brainer to try and sell as many used titles as you can.

Publishers have to be making cvash hand over fist and they know it.

Now they only have to make an agreement with the pirates as they are just as much hindered by the online passes if they are even able to go online (i dont know about the 360 but pirates on the ps3 cant go online in most games)

sorry but nobody owes you anything for their used games publishers.

you dont see car manufactures asking for money on used cars. same goes for music and movies.

why should the game market be any different?

jimmy, can you be like, my british columbo? ill even sock you in the eye so yours goes a little crooked as well.

c'mon, we need someone doing this sleuth detective without a gun shit in the industry.

Wow. That's actually a completely rational and socially redeeming means of dealing with such massive discrepancy in business relations. But for something like this to happen, EVERY major used retailer would have to be on board.

For some reason I very much doubt that GameStop - being the... uh... "major-est" - would just jump in when they can still rake in hilarious cash off of a product they but no production cost into. I'm not saying that GameStop is worse than any other corporation, mind, but with all the short-sightedness corporations show, the ones doing the best have the likelihood of showing the most short-sightedness.

I would like everyone to win, especially the consumer, but it would require all capitalists to SHARE the wealth. Not really part of the capitalist model.

Online passes are stupid.

That is all.

This, could be awesome. But I disagree for the fact that publishers still want more money, but in the end this can be the ultimate deal to happen, unless publishers start to bitch about money and put another shitty thing in the game to be more expensive

OMG I love Bits and Pieces, they are my local game shop and they sell loads of retro and new stuff =D

The retailers suck, the publishers suck, and the ones who suffer is the gamer.

Prices go up and online passes happen cause publishers want more, prices go up and used sales go up cause retailers want more.

Consumer pays more because they have no choice.

Well actually they have a choice, to stop playing these games and get cheaper classic games or indie games, or give up gaming all together.

The later isn't a bad idea.

Don't paint retailers as the white hats. Remember that they are the reason we have location specific pre-order bonus DLC.

And while I won't go as far as to say that a used game shouldn't cost more than $9, they push those "$5 below retail" used titles like mad, intentionally cannibalizing new game sales for maximum profit. I'm not saying the publishers are the good guys either, just that both sides are guilty.

Mind, all this might not matter in another five to ten years. Or at least whenever consoles begin to seriously move to digital distribution. (Which is why Gamestop has been forcing its way into the digital distribution chain, so that we can still get Gamestop-exclusive pre-order bonuses when we buy our digital downloads through Gamestop...)

I'd just like to add that while GameStop is horrible on the corporate end - just ask any high traffic store about the shit hours they get - they're still saints compared to publishers. In general you should be grateful for retailers looking for ways to keep games affordable because publisher do thier best to make it less profitable for anyone but them.

Video games have never retailed at more than $60 before, it's soooo stoooopid and overpriced, therefore I have to buy used, and these dumb online passes ruin it for me.
/Starting gaming in the 21st century.

This isn't exactly an industry secret or anything. With the exception of (maybe) hardware (for inventory reasons), the profits for selling new video games has always been razor thin for the retailer. And by "razor thin" I mean, a Call of Duty or Mario mega-game needs to come out EVERY month just to pay the rent and employees.

How much of that money will even go to the developers? I would campion this idea if say least the majority of proceeds went straight to the pockets of the people who made the game, and not the people holding budgets and paychecks hostage to rush out games and tack on DLC.

How does a comparatively expensive form of entertainment become the larger and more lucrative than other, less expensive forms? Give it the single most consumer convenient second hand market in the history of small ticket items, and maybe all goods regardless of ticket size.

How does this form of entertainment thrive in the face of such a dependence? Give that second hand market the ability to recycle a huge percentage (somewhere between 80% and 90%, in my estimation) of the profit it makes right back into the industry it makes that profit off of.

How do you go about fucking with that equilibrium? Hand said industry over to bean counters who think only in short term gains for their specific company, and rarely about the reverberating effects of their actions industry wide. Do this until retailers promise to give you a slice of the only profitable pie they have on the sill, and pretend like the costs won't be passed on to the end consumer.

In this case, it is almost inconceivable any large retailer would make a claim with so much money weighted on it without have a plan to offset those costs. The only rung on the ladder under the retailers is the one we stand on, and shit rolls downhill.

largest*

so i was wondering what wakatheassholetashi's take on all this was going to be, and it looks as tho he has been banned. can anyone pm me the skinny on what finally got him the axe from dtoid? or did someone with power just click on his name to look at his posting history and said "fuck this guy?"

Yeah... when you look at the 2009 figures for Gamestop - 41% of their net sales was from new games, yet that was only 21.3% of their net profit. Used games sales were only 13.2% of their net sales... yet made up 46.8% of their profit. Apparently the profit figures on new game sales must be exceedingly low! With digital game sales also digging into their profits, the retail model is definitely under pressure and if games continue to be sold in a non-digital, retail format, some changes may have to be made to ensure retailers stay viable.
... though the company did manage $376 million in net income in 2009 - but that was also before the big digital sales push that seems more commonplace nowadays.

Their offer does make sense, though publishers and game devs also seem to indicate that often they don't recouperate their costs through retail sales, so I would hate to see game costs go up to accomodate a better retail slice.

Yeah Impulse will only come more and more important on GameStop's portfoliio as it moves it's pre order exclusive DLC to the platform; of course like all of you i'm sticking with Steam as long as there are ridiculous christmas sales.

I sort of got the feeling that HMV was phasing out video games (in Canada at least), stupid, yes, but I was looking for SSF4:AE, they didn't have in stock, and said they will most likely get none again. Anyways, less money in their competitor's hands (e.g. Best Buy) is a win for them anyways.

Since I know someone that published a game themselves, in retail, I know that the Retailers are full of bullshit.
They have the best terms, get the game to a good price and the publisher have to pay extra to get a better shelfplacement etc. else your just placed somewhere where no one looks.

They are assholes for short.

@Elsa

Yeah, and if you look back as far as Gamestop has recorded used and new sales separately (fiscal 2004), the percentage of net profit gained from used games has fluctuated between 45.X and 47.X. Note, these numbers began recording at a time where the industry was actually in a bit of a slump, and I would venture a guess that that percentage, which has remained steady for the last 8 years at least, was the norm for much longer than that (possibly always).

Moral of the story? Used games have accounted for the same percent of profit for as long as it has been recorded at Gamestop, and was steady a few years before the industry fucking exploded with growth. With this in mind, I cannot imagine Gamestop specifically would give up some of that money, considering the amount of money they make off used games comparatively has not changed for as long as they have been recording the stat. I doubt very much so that any concession made by publishers to offset potential second hand market profit sharing would actually do so, not without the consumers subsidizing it for them.

which game seems more worth $60: Rayman Origins or Skyrim?

@Dinnertimeninja

Rayman Origins. I imagine it bloody works. At least on the PS3.

Shoe's on the other foot.

Now this, I can get behind.

bout fucking time someone said this

consumers opinions is all that matters, not your backwarded-dinosaur age of method of product selling ( looking at the entire media industry as a whole)