We all rant on about Supermarkets this discounting on the High Street, but when it comes down to it the public cannot afford a new game every week no matter where they shop.

We Have seen a vast increase in people trading in their old games to fund buying New Releases. And subsequently Pre-Owned sales are up by 50% this year because those who have little money want games at what they can afford and Pre-Owned serves that purpose.

Love it or Hate it Pre-Owned Games and Trading In funds the sales of New Titles so it will get more popular.

Publishers please note we sell more of your new games when people tradein = PRE-OWNED MARKET

yep this is true we are selling more used games than new, and our new games we buy from supermarkets anyway as they are cheaper than suppliers and you dont need a minimum order for free carriage, if i sell out a member of staff nips up the road and we just have 2-3 copies of a new release, pre owned it going very well, we couldnt survive on new, esecially at the price some publishers charge, we are now not takin in the new ds titles since 80% of our customers use r4.

I find that the only time new releases sell straight for cash is when its a really big anticipated release.

the other 90% of new titles people would rather trade in to get the price down as there not willing to spend hard cash on it.

yes thats totally correct, we have customers that now rent new games first just incase, even if the demo was on xbox live or psn, as sometimes demos dont really reflect the completed product,
Modern warefare 2 will be a cash / credit card straight sale
even if it is well over priced by activision, just because they know they can over charge

Glad that pre-owned sales help fund sales of new products, perhaps you guys would like to share the profits of selling games two or three times too?

Gamesurvivor point taken but when games cost us 37 from centresoft and GEM and we are supposed to put them out for 40 to compete then of course we need to sell pre-owned to survive.

If we survive by selling pre-owned then we can sell new games so publishers can survive and make more new games for us to sell.

Without pre-owned games new game sales will fall drastically. Ultimately publishers will not be able to put money into new games.

gamesurvivor; Why should a retailer share the profit from every sale with someone else other than themselves?

Who is taking the risk in giving out saleable goods in exchange for the customer's trades? The Developers? The Publishers? It's the retailer.

This news item proves what most in the videogame retail industry know, and what developers seem blinkered to, preowned is keeping the industry alive whether it likes it or not. All but the strongest titles need trade-ins to gather sales.

If devs are worried then create games which customers don't complete in six hours and that don't have online modes which barely anyone uses, then you'll find that very few trade your game in and consequently customers have to buy new.

Look at Sony and the PSPGo, and the lack of support for it at highstreet retail, and indeed on online retail - alienate retail and they'll kill your product unless its something amazing.

so all items you sell on ebay amazon all used cars motor bikes should we all pay a cut back to the manufacturer?
dont be a fool. if there was no pre owned, indies would not exist,
even game gamestation would struggle to make a living, if we buy a game for 32 33 + vat
and tesco sells the same game for 37 97 explain to me how you compete when all we sell is games and they can add 20p on to 500 other items to make their profit back up ? never heard of lost leaders ? seriously what would you do if it was your business ? joker ! maybe if new games were not so expensive like in the US kids wouldnt trade so much, kids need pre owned as much as indies, they cant shell out £40 for each new game,
neither can the parents

Declaration of interest: I work for a games publisher (but I neither expect nor feel entitled to any tears shed on my behalf). I am also a games player and I have purchased new and pre-owned games.

Good Thing: relatively free markets.

Bad Thing: general level of ignorance revealed by online public conversation. No mention, for example, of the leverage and other benefits enjoyed by a business with 50-60% market share; the monies mandatorily paid by publishers to platform holders; other costs of goods (COGs); the effects of currency fluctuation. Indeed no discussion about what it takes to make a game, put it in a box, and put it on a shelf.

As I say, I don't expect any tears to be shed for publishers, but I wouldn't mind seeing some less cretinous and ignorant conversation.

For starters, I'd like to see an article somewhere on the costs at each stage of bringing a game to market, and the margins enjoyed by each participant, preceded by a poll asking what the readers think are the costs and margins. I think the public and many retailers alike would be surprised to learn that publishers aren't in general evil and trying to rip them off.

As for henry ford's comment, "if there was no pre owned, indies would not exist, even game gamestation would struggle to make a living", I would love to know:

1. henry's definition of "struggle";

2. the margin henry thinks Game Group enjoys on new hardware and software.

"I'd like to see an article somewhere on the costs at each stage of bringing a game to market, and the margins enjoyed by each participant."

Lets see some figures on the prices Supermarkets pay compared to the rest of retail.

points taken by JS of course games cost in some cases millions to develop, but then i think of games that get released and cost is alot lower than other publishers but rrp is the same on the devlivery note,
money is wasted on pos that we get either on day 1 of a game release or 1 week after, and we put it straight in the bin as normally another release is due out that we will promote,
when i say indies/ chains would struggle without pre owned, its simple to cover all costs of running a business we could not sell new games at 37 97 as supermarkets do, in which case we couldnt survive on peripherals, has anyone seen games used prices £5 cheaper than new !
i would think even chains would find it hard to make profit in a new sales only situation, im being serious if there was no pre owned we would not be here and definatly would not sell any new games as a result, im sure publishers / developers have alot of costs but in the end customers go where the cheapest product is and without pre owned we couldnt not sell new products at the same price supermarkets do

I'm not just talking about development costs, e.g. what does it cost per unit to put a game on console disc or cart?*

Wrt indy margins, I have absolutely no idea of indy margins on new or pre-owned or whether or not indies would struggle without pre-owned. That is why I did not offer an opinion on what would happen to indies if pre-owned was somehow prevented.

I do however have a pretty good idea of the margins for Game Group (and others). I can tell you that for my definition of struggle they would not struggle without the pre-owned market. I ask you again what margin do you think Game Group enjoys on new software?

Is it approximately,

a. 5%
b. 10%
c. 20%, or
d. 40%?

* rather closer to £10 than 0p.

since i went into game recently and some new games are at 49 99
are you seriously telling me people would still buy these games at this price when tesco do them for 37 97 ?
are you also trying to tell me that game buy their games at a better price than indies do ? as far as i was aware they buy from the same suppliers, maybe they get bulk deals but this is why they drop the price on all new games so fast, we had a sony rep in sayin he visited game in birmingham and the manager was panicling since he had 300 singstar games with mics and none were selling, i think your missing the point game are over priced on new and used, if customer could not trade in they would go to asda, tesco etc i know i would, unless game dropped the price of their new games

Anyone else experiencing problems posting comments? The form keeps telling me I must not include URLs in my comment - well, I haven't! Indeed there is nothing that looks anything like an URL to me.

Wrt the deal any business gets, of course BigChain will get a better deal than SmallIndy. And by deal I don't simply mean pence per unit.

Wrt shoppers buying games at 49 99 when they could get them elsewhere for less, I don't see why that seems so inconceivable. Shoppers aren't yet 100% savvy.

Going back to your earlier comment about Tesco having to "make their profit back up" elsewhere, I confess I don't understand what you mean. You say you buy a game for 32 33 - I presume you sell it for 39 99. You say Tesco sells for 37 97. Suppose it too buys at 32 33. I don't understand why Tesco would have a particular need to make up the profit elsewhere - they aren't making a loss on those goods. And they need only sell just shy of one and a half times as many as you in order to bring in the same amount of money that you bring in. I don't see that being a problem for Tesco.

All publishers please feel free to move over to a digital only distrubution model.

Considering the total Crap that gets released, more than half of the games industry would be out of buisness in 6 months.

Publishers:

Do Ford gain a cut in profits whenever one of their cars are sold at a used cars garage, then again privately then again when they reach the scrap yard?

No.

What makes you so special that you feel you should profit from products that you've ALREADY profited from? What makes you so special that you feel you have the right to dip your hands into the pockets of retailers you've already bled dry with your inflated costs?

Quit frankly you're all just a bunch of greedy sh*thouses. Yes I'm looking at you JS, another greedy publisher who feels hard done by. Well boo, bloody hoo. Put a sock in it you w*nker.

JB, please point out where I said publishers should get a cut from the pre-owned market.

If you are genuinely interested in reasonable discussion rather than mindless abuse of strangers on the internet, you might consider that retail enjoys *up to* 50% margin on new product. In other words a consumer pays £40 for a game costing retail £20. The platform holders (Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony) get about £8 per unit (i.e. a fifth of a £40 game) just on COGs (i.e. a blank cart or disc in a box costs roughly £8). So that's £12 left to the publisher. Take the other costs from that - development is a big chunk, marketing, staff costs, royalties etc. Can't do it justice here but, basically, publishers can't rake it in unless they do big numbers - particularly in the UK market, which is pretty tough at present. I'd like to know what costs you think have been inflated by publishers.

Whatever; there are accounts reports for publicly listed companies and authoritative papers out there for people to pore over if they are serious.

As for Ford, the car business is rather different to the games industry. And, in fact, as well as shifting units, Ford also repurchases cars to sell at auction, it receives interest from loans and revenue from leases (no doubt there are other receivables). They also get money as a result of the scrappage scheme. Furthermore, what is the equivalent of the platform holder to which Ford pays a substantial proportion (say a fifth or quarter, i.e four figures) of the RRP on each unit?

What makes publishers special? Well, nothing really. But publishing is a business and any business will seek to reduce costs and increase profits. Are you greedy when you ask for an increase in your salary? Are you greedy when you ask or wait for discounts because you want to save a bit of money?

What an important publisher might do is not give particular retailers the next big hitting product. You might see licences that say "you may not sell this secondhand". And more publishers will seek to remove costs, and improve margin, in between them and the consumer, e.g. distribution (you'll note that some publishers have their own distribution) and continual movement toward digital download.

JS, where on earth do you get your figures from? Have you actually ever worked in video game retail? Well clearly you haven't and are utterly clueless to the costs of buying in stock whether its through distribution or directly from the publisher. As an independent retailer I can tell you for starters that this:

"retail enjoys *up to* 50% margin on new product. In other words a consumer pays £40 for a game costing retail £20."

...is the biggest crock of sh*t I've ever heard on here. Why don't you try nearer £27-34 pounds for a new AAA title before VAT, then weigh in price wars created by the Supermarkets that de-value new products forcing down the RRP, which in turn leaves specialist and independent games retailers making as little as £2-4 per title.

I WISH I was only paying £20 for a new title, believe me!

Like I said, you're just another greedy publisher whinging about something they have no right to. So like I said before, belt up.

I did make it clear about the "up to" - but I see you're not interested in reasonable discussion, and you seem a bit upset by words on the internet, so I will leave this thread.