We all know that developers and publishers aren’t the biggest fans of used game sales. It cuts into their revenue stream, but makes GameStop and stores like it a ton of cash every year. Many publishers are finding ways to add value to the new game sales to discourage gamers from picking up used copies.
I recently read an article from Stephen Totilo over at MTV’s Multiplayer Blog with his proposal on how developers and publishers can stop used game sales by adding Achievements/Trophies for purchasing a new copy of the game. While I like the idea, I realized that Microsoft and Epic had already implemented their own system when I opened my copy of Gears of War 2.
Inside all copies of the biggest Xbox 360 game this Holiday is a code to download an exclusive Flashback Map Pack. You get five free updated versions of the some of the best original Gears of War maps: Canals, Gridlock, Mansion, Subway and Tyro Station. Since these are only downloadable via the one time use code including in the game packaging, only the first owner of the game can download this map pack. Picking up a used copy of Gears of War 2 means you have five less maps than the majority of the game’s population.
Microsoft could have easily made this map pack available for free to all on the Xbox Live Marketplace, but deliberately used unique codes inside the game packaging to encourage people to purchase the game new as time goes on. With the used game market being as large as it is, I can’t say I blame them. I actually applaud the tactic. Ensure new game sales for Gears of War 2 through the Holidays and beyond by giving an added benefit to those buying new.
As time goes on, I’m guessing more and more developers and publishers will employ this strategy to keep sales of new copies of their games higher for a longer period of time. Once digital distribution for full games becomes the standard, this issue will be moot. But for now, I’m a big fan of added value for those who purchase new copies of games.
So if i rent Gow2 which is my plan Epic and all them are gonna fuck it all up.
How are they “gonna fuck it all up”? The incentive is there to buy a new copy of the game. Anyone else will be playing online without the Flashback Map Pack, whether you rent the game or buy it used.
Another dumb loot Ninja article that is biased.
Like Microsoft and Epic are the only ones that give content in this manner.
Shameful
@Cd – Thank you for your very well thought out and enlightened comment.
I would love to know where the bias is in this article? Stating fact about what is including in a game and why it’s there has absolutely no bias towards anything.
I don’t like this for a few reasons. First of all, I don’t think they should have included this many maps only for people who buy the game new. I mean of course it is up to them but personally I will buy a game and then sell it maybe a month later to a friend but I don’t think it will work too well with Gears.
We will see though.
There are also a lot of people who just rent games.
Yeah I agree with Matt here, I don’t think the article is bias at all. He merely states he thought it was a good idea for Microsoft and Epic to put into place and the fact of the matter is it really is a smart tatic to decrease used game sales and increase new game sales. The first three paragraphs of the article are clearly just stating the facts with no bias what so ever, with the final two just a discussion on Matts opinions and where he possible sees this idea going.
@cd I don’t really see any bias in the above article either. You structured your response in a manner that leads to believe other developers/publishers are distributing software in a similar fashion. Are there others doing the same? Can you provide some examples?
Thanks.
this doesn’t bother me in the least. hopefully people will realize that buying a used copy for $5 less is a friggin’ waste. and hopefully gamestop will suffer a blow and lower the prices of used games. and then we will have world peace.
(meaning, we will have world peace before gamestop will lower prices, the douche bags)
well, i only see this as a promotional gimmick that won’t last past the 1st 2 weeks…once they realize that the 5 “old” maps aren’t that big of an incentive, i’m sure they will release them later down the road as a download for a few bucks and push it as “we want everyone to have them even if they buy the game used.”
That’s great on games that only have a 5 to 10 dollar markdown but as is with everything, the game will drop in price and there will be a point where getting it used will still equate to a better deal than new. Especially if you can purchase a map pack download later.
I think a better thing to do is for the developer to keep adding more new gameplay to a game so that a person just keeps it longer. If you can’t find a used game, obviously, you’re going to buy it new. Keep the used games off the streets and more people will have to buy it new.
@Raven – I sell my used games to friends for a good price actually. If the game has been out for ~2 weeks to a month I’ll sell it for $45 so I cut gamestop out of the loop and both of us end up happy
I’m glad there doing this. I personally think it’s absurd that games can be bought pre-owned. Many games studios loose out on profits because of it; and most developers (contrary to popular belief) struggle to stay alive as publishers generally take a very large chunk of the money.
Looking at other industries; the music industry, and movie industry etc; almost none have this pre-owned market that games have; reducing profits for publishers and developers. Personally I think it should be in the EULA for all games that they are not allowed to be sold on as this is common in most other digital product industries.
Anyways thats just my opinion.
Well the idea is all great and stuff but what happens if a whole country doesn’t get any of the codes.Well that’s exactly what happened in South Africa,so we had one day to go before the midnight launch and everyone was all excited for GOW 2 and chirping away on the forums when all of a sudden the news hit.
Some of people on the forum had gotten the game early thanks to a certain retailer breaking the street date and that’s when most found out that our copies of GOW 2 had no codes.
Standard Editions – No bonus 5 maps.
Limited Editions – No bonus 5 maps,no Golden Lancer and 48 Hour Trials.
At least someone informed most that these weren’t in the box and Mike Capps of Epic was also informed about the problem and he even responded saying they’ll be looking into it”well we hope so at least”
But the whole point is why tease us and then give us nothing and truth be told if doesn’t get sorted out there are going to be a bunch of GOW 2’s on the second hand market not helping Epic or Microsoft at all.
BTW,we weren’t the only country that didn’t get any codes.
Full original article here on a local SA website.
http://www.lazygamer.co.za/xbox-360/exclusive-no-gears-of-war-2-flashback-map-pack-for-south-africans
http://www.lazygamer.co.za/xbox-360/gears-of-war-2-map-codes-in-south-africa-chapter-2
I always buy new now. But I’m guilty of buying used and trading in games in the past. I like the having a nice new copy of a game that I get to unwrap myself. Think of how many sales game developers are losing buy the used game market. Some games are hits, but other have borderline success and lost sales could be life or death for a game studio. Now I’m only buying new to support the game makers.
wtf stupid 7 year olds stop crying about it and leave matt alone jsut becuase you still live with your mom and cant afford to buy it sdfu faggets go away
@Keith Carter
There actually are other games following this trend. The only ones I can think of off of the top of my head are Rock Band and GH:WT. Rock Band’s came with a code to unlock 15-20 (a very good amount) of dlc songs (mostly stuff you haven’t heard of but still.. that’s a lot of songs). Although this won’t be available for download for another week or two i think. Guitar Hero was supposed to give 2-3 big name licensed tracks for free (though I’m not completely sure).
I know there have been a few other games implementing such a tactic but their names beguile me right now.
thanks captain obvious! Lets see you do something about it now.
@ the crybabies….Yea I guess I’ll just sit back and laugh when people are complaining that they can’t get the maps. When Im playing with my goldhammerburst on the exclusive maps.
@gaypoeple – I’m sorry that you didn’t go to school. Secondly, many people here live in something called the real world, where we don’t have unlimited amounts of money to spend on all the games coming out.
For example, I can count about 4-7 games I wanted (but I could only pick up 2). Lets do the math (if you can 0_0 ). 60 x 7 = $420.
I’m not saying “Oh fuck you matt”. I’m just saying that I understand his point about how the devs lose out however I still think that selling used games can be good for people strapped on cash.
I think this is a good marketing plan. Gamestop makes a killing off those used game sales. I think it would also help with pirating. I do feel they should maybe offer the maps for dowload @ a reasonable cost though.Another way I see them persuading buyers into getting the new copy is the limited edition copies that come with a exclusive item, and I’m pretty sure that when someone trades it in that they don’t always give Gamestop the item that came with the game.
Unfortunatly in some countries (South Africa) because we do not have “offical” xbox live support they did not even send us the codes. Also guys with that ordered the LE they did not even get the Goldern Lancer codes. Now as much as i do think that sending these codes is a cool thing please can they just send it to every one.
It is a bit stupid in my mind.
You applaud this tactic? During the credit crunch! I take it you must be pretty rich then. Used games are the crux of the gaming development because of the retail stores, not the consumers. If retailers gave money back to the developer on used sales, this wouldn’t be a problem. I preferred EA’s tactic rather than Epic’s.
The maps are a good idea, but there will definitely be a bulk of people who couldn’t care less. I included.
Bitching about buying used games is pointless. I’ve bought all my games used and will continue doing it in the future. I just don’t have the money to pay approx 80-90 dollars (yes, these are the retail prices in Europe) for every game that I like. If you still want to complain about something, complain about piracy because it’s not going away. Therefore I think it’s unfair to complain about the used games market because even buying used games there is a possibility that the seller will use the money to buy a new game (i’m talking ebay here).
Eventually I could easily buy this:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.16995
and end buying games completely. However, I choose not to.
I’ll usually buy new whenever possible, however there have been quite a few times when I’ve seen second hand games that I’ve never heard of with no chance of getting them new anymore, so I’ll buy it
@pwninator – GH and RB are slightly different because if you are buying used you are going to need instruments. From what I’ve seen my friends have burned through several guitars but still have the same disc so dev/pub still profit from instrument sales. Good point on the DLC, can you DL again if you lose the material?
@M where are you shopping? I live in the UK and I dropped GBP 39.99 including tax (VAT) on Fallout 3 the other day at ASDA. That equates to less than USD 64. And why use the relatively weak USD instead of EUR or GBP in the EU? And realize buying New games ensures money, however little, gets to the dev team, used games just profits whoever is selling.
@ South Africa – tough hit, I feel sorry for you. Have you experienced distribution challenges in the past?
@Keith – Nope to to this extent we do get bundled with the German region for the ratings so for example the previous gears maps were region locked. But this can be gotten around.But yeah it is not cool at all.
Apparently Microsoft has investigated Live support but we are considered to small a market. It has been estimated (by some of the local forum owners and local game sites) that there are about 4000 active XBOX Live users in South Africa and i have heard that is bigger than some of the other areas that have it.
Never have games been limited to this extent and there are a lot of people myself included that are a bit annoyed with this.
[...] Fuente: “Loot-Ninja” [...]
[...] all know about the Flashback Map Pack and it’s use in discouraging used game sales. But how do the newly tweaks maps look? Check it out, then go play them. I’ll curb stomp you [...]
If the Devs would put out games worth hanging onto people would. If people like the game they keep the game.
As to piracy there are multiple variables. Mass protection systems that make it harder for legit customers to use a copy they have purchased being one major reason.
Another major reason is the lack of faith in the gaming industry. Fallout 3 was a major let down to me. One of the only games I have ever spent $49.99 on and I regret it. The ending sucked. I wanted a fallout 1&2 ending where it detailed out what happened based on my actions on the side quests. If I could find somewhere to offload my PC version for a reasonable price I would.
Whats funny is I still have two copies of Starcraft. My wife and I still play that game. In all reality I am not looking forward to Starcraft 2 because of the degradation of the gaming industry.
So instead of complaining about a used game market, put out games worth keeping and not this crap.
XBOX360 LIVE PURCHASES COMPLAINTS DRM. i just spent my whole paycheck on xbox live game downloads (4games and extra content). downloaded them all to my x360, tried them out and was happy. BUT then i took the HARDDRIVE out to go to my friends house and guess what kind of CRAP happened – none of them worked because of xbox DRM baised on xbox Serial #s. i am not happy because i dont want to haul around my xbox because of its serial number. they are very fragile from what i hear and seen.