Used video games play an integral part in the lives of the gamer: instead of spending $60 for a new title, they can save some cash and get the same game used at a discounted price. But from a developer's perspective, every used game that's sold yields no revenue, and that has created a divide between publishers and gamers over whether or not used video games should be sold at all
Two Atari executives--CEO David Gardner and President Phil Harrison--shared some gripes about used video game sales earlier this week at an Atari event. And as far as they're concerned, used games are hurting us all.
"Second-hand game sales represent consumer choice and desire," Gardner said at the event. "Obviously, it has economically been extremely painful for the industry (and) the publishers don't benefit."
Harrison echoed the CEO's sentiment saying, "there's no doubt that second-hand game sales have a macro-economic impact on the industry and a lot of people get miserable about it."
Harrison went on to say that his company is focused on developing more games with incentives like post-release content built-in that discourage used game sales and coax more owners into keeping their games.
I'm all for incentives that increase a game's viability, but simply adding more post-release content to a title doesn't strike me as something that will kill used game sales. In fact, I don't even understand why the video game industry would want to kill the sale of used video games.
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