Didigtal resale

AidoEirE

Second thread in as many minutes, but never seen sominthing like it. 99% sure this cant happen but think it would be cool if you could sell your games that you bought digitaly back to the psnstore/xbox store. They'd make a profit and you get some cash back. Even if they implementated an award system in credits or something to your account.
Clueless in this area but thoughts?

SeantheMan

The nearest thing to it I can think of is buying digital games via steam and gifting them.
You can't regulate the price in-steam, but you could communicate to someone outside of Steam and come to an arrangement.

I think it might be a bit shady or illegal, not too sure.

Shiminay

What do any of those services gain by giving you back money for something you've already paid for? Not a thing It'll never happen and I predict that the music and film industry will have to face this legal issue before the computer games industry does - questions have already been raised about how you give your iTunes collection to someone in your will etc.

CatInABox

The original vision for the Xbox One included something along these lines, but, like everything to do with the Xbox One reveal, was rightly panned.

The idea was that you could "sell" your game at a publisher set price, with the proceeds split between you and the publisher. We never found out how much the publisher would take off you, as the restrictions required to make such a system work were onerous, and caused a massive backlash.

Basically, Microsoft were going to mandate an always on connection, just to support this feature. If I remember correctly, it would also have killed the second hand market in stores with this restriction, i.e. you'd have to sell your game through an approved channel.

I think it's a good idea, but it has to be consumer friendly. Perhaps a restriction that you have to go online once a week, or ten days, like Steam currently does with it's offline mode, would allow the best of both worlds.

Shiminay wrote:

What do any of those services gain by giving you back money for something you've already paid for? Not a thing It'll never happen and I predict that the music and film industry will have to face this legal issue before the computer games industry does - questions have already been raised about how you give your iTunes collection to someone in your will etc

The only way publishers and developers would go for something like this is if they could also restrict or profit from the physical second hand market at the same time. They're already "losing" the money in that market, getting back 10% or 20% would be something they'd welcome.

Stone Deaf 4evr

CatInABox wrote: »

The original vision for the Xbox One included something along these lines, but, like everything to do with the Xbox One reveal, was rightly panned.

The idea was that you could "sell" your game at a publisher set price, with the proceeds split between you and the publisher. We never found out how much the publisher would take off you, as the restrictions required to make such a system work were onerous, and caused a massive backlash.

Basically, Microsoft were going to mandate an always on connection, just to support this feature. If I remember correctly, it would also have killed the second hand market in stores with this restriction, i.e. you'd have to sell your game through an approved channel.

I think it's a good idea, but it has to be consumer friendly. Perhaps a restriction that you have to go online once a week, or ten days, like Steam currently does with it's offline mode, would allow the best of both worlds.



The only way publishers and developers would go for something like this is if they could also restrict or profit from the physical second hand market at the same time. They're already "losing" the money in that market, getting back 10% or 20% would be something they'd welcome.

I could see it working in a fashion tbh, but it'd only increase microtranactions and would probably only apply to older games.

take for example, Halo 5, its been out over a year, and the current population is after dipping, its usually around 20 euros when it goes on sale. now, say you could sell your digital copy for 15, and 5 of that goes to the studio itself, and the rest goes into your account credit.

the studio wins by getting a % of a sale, getting a new player into the population, and a potential buyer for the req pack microtransactions.

AidoEirE

Stone Deaf 4evr wrote: »

I could see it working in a fashion tbh, but it'd only increase microtranactions and would probably only apply to older games.

take for example, Halo 5, its been out over a year, and the current population is after dipping, its usually around 20 euros when it goes on sale. now, say you could sell your digital copy for 15, and 5 of that goes to the studio itself, and the rest goes into your account credit.

the studio wins by getting a % of a sale, getting a new player into the population, and a potential buyer for the req pack microtransactions.

That's what i was thinking alright when i posted. The studio gets some % of the cash back and you get a few quid. Better alternative than deleting a game off your library and not playing it again

Nody

AidoEirE wrote: »

That's what i was thinking alright when i posted. The studio gets some % of the cash back and you get a few quid. Better alternative than deleting a game off your library and not playing it again

Or the studio don't let you resell it and take the full profit from people buying the game on sales instead.

Stone Deaf 4evr

Nody wrote: »

Or the studio don't let you resell it and take the full profit from people buying the game on sales instead.

There has to come a point where games just don't sell anymore though. And you'll never see them discounted below a certain level.
If you look at gamestops declining sales figures, part of that is down to the move to digital content creating an absence of physical copies to trade in. A lot of budget conscious people would buy a new release using funds generated from trading 3 games against it.

If Microsoft were to structure it in such a way that the money from the sale goes into your account, it'd definitely generate sales of other titles in the same way gamestop do it.

Nody

Stone Deaf 4evr wrote: »

There has to come a point where games just don't sell anymore though. And you'll never see them discounted below a certain level.

Actually you'd be wrong; Steam sales have shown that the tale really never ends and they will keep selling games (assuming they are half decent). Add in the opportunity to enter the Steam sales periods, all variations of Humble bundles etc. and you see triple A games below a fiver consistently.

Nothing stops the studios from following the same principle and below is an example:


As for trading in against other games; why would I want you to trade in my game to buy another studio's games? And if you already own my game I can simply offer you a discount if you already have it installed. The reason is quite simple; between the cut of MS, the studio etc. you'd be lucky to get $1 back on $10 and the studio will then lose even more money as it has to pay MS yet another cut on the next digital download they sell. Hence they would give you at best 1 or 2 dollars back on a new game and no where near what you'd get in a store because the profit is simply not there for anyone but MS who can take an even bigger cut.

Temptamperu

There should be a reward system for buying digital. Like super value or tescos do. Also why are digital games the same price as a physical copy?

Nody

Temptamperu wrote: »

There should be a reward system for buying digital. Like super value or tescos do. Also why are digital games the same price as a physical copy?

Because physical game stores insist on it or they refuse to stock the game; this is also another reason why physical games tend to come with a skin or similar as additional motivation.

Stone Deaf 4evr

Nody wrote: »

Actually you'd be wrong; Steam sales have shown that the tale really never ends and they will keep selling games (assuming they are half decent). Add in the opportunity to enter the Steam sales periods, all variations of Humble bundles etc. and you see triple A games below a fiver consistently.

Nothing stops the studios from following the same principle and below is an example:


As for trading in against other games; why would I want you to trade in my game to buy another studio's games? And if you already own my game I can simply offer you a discount if you already have it installed. The reason is quite simple; between the cut of MS, the studio etc. you'd be lucky to get $1 back on $10 and the studio will then lose even more money as it has to pay MS yet another cut on the next digital download they sell. Hence they would give you at best 1 or 2 dollars back on a new game and no where near what you'd get in a store because the profit is simply not there for anyone but MS who can take an even bigger cut.

steam is a different beast to the consoles, its pretty much the be all and end all of getting games, even physical pc releases are turning out to be steam keys in a dvd case, and theres no chance of trading in pc games anywhere. Also, you never see the kind of discount on console games that you see in humble bundles, if you did, i'd be all over it.

gizmo

Temptamperu wrote: »

There should be a reward system for buying digital. Like super value or tescos do. Also why are digital games the same price as a physical copy?

Well one of the reasons is that the percentage of the cost of a game built in to cover the physical production and distribution of the game is extremely small, so much so that it's more than likely covered by the higher and flat percentage taken by third party digital store fronts. As for why they're not cheaper on first party ones, if the publishers who own such store fronts were to undercut the third party ones as a matter of policy, they'd find themselves facing considerably push back from the third party ones and since they, most notably Steam, account for the largest percentage of sales, it would be overly detrimental to sales.

K.O.Kiki

I prefer to just buy good games that I won't mind replaying in 5, 10 years time.