originally posted in:Sapphire
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It's not confirmed as yet, but it's entirely possible that both Sony and Microsoft could take measures to prevent used game sales with their new consoles. The prospect of this is obviously abhorrent to the big game retailers because they make a killing off used games sales and I've heard many claim that to take such measures would be anti-consumer. However, would it really be such an unreasonable move?Used game sales arguably have a greater detrimental effect on the games industry than piracy because while you can never prove that a pirated game represents a lost sale, it is a fact that used games (which publishers/devs never see a cut of) are often sold in place of brand new copies at retailers such as GameStop (they might knock five dollars off the full price for a game that is in pristine condition, for instance). So given that used game sales represent millions of dollars in net loss for the games industry, we surely can't blame MS and Sony for considering this sort of thing, or can we?
Where do you stand on this issue?
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Edited by A Good Troll: 1/17/2013 2:01:32 PMLike it or not, publishers and developers are not very profitable. Gamers demand extreme quality for games - more content, better graphics, longer storylines, competitive multiplayer - but the cost of a video game inflation-adjusted has not increased from the days of Super Mario. Profit margins have fallen. The only thing that keeps publishers afloat is pushing as many sales as they can - the cost of one "bad" game can ruin an entire studio or publisher. So, they stick with games they know are safe and will sell and don't try to innovate - ala, "Call of Duty" or "Madden 2013". Nearly every single complaint gamers have about what goes on in modern video gaming can be solved by one thing: The gamer looking in the mirror and realizing that they are the driving force of the problem.