Whining honest games publishers
August 19th, 2009 by HenInteresting BBC article -
UK games market being ’strangled’. One of the main complaints being that the 2nd hand game market is stifling industry growth. When you buy a game, a lump of that money goes to the publisher (and various others involved). When you sell that game again, you don’t give any of it to the publisher (and cronies).
Not content with steadily rising prices in the gaming arms race (much like the TV and music arms races of throwing more and more money at each release and using that black hole to justify whining… in fact much like top tier football transfers), creators of games are being nice and honest that they’re looking forward to digital distribution when selling on a game won’t be possible. Of course they’ll also then complain when the consumer base reacts to increasingly being milked of their incomes and turns increasingly to piracy.
This pattern of moving from ownership to licensing seems to be everywhere… there must be a whole economic theory around it if only I knew the write name.
The theory of spending more and more money and taking on more and more risk to increase your share of a relatively constant pool of wealth; and then justifying attempts to give less and less value for that wealth and making the transfer of value a temporary thing with the need to spend more and more money. “Movies are so expensive to make nowadays, we can’t let you ‘own’ them”. “Surviving in the Premier League costs more and more each year”. “Games aren’t cheap you know”. “We have to charge full price for that 1960s classic because… erm…remastered….erm…cost of…you’ll pay it like the dumb eyeballs you are”.
Wonder what the games industry thinks of my kids spending more of their time playing DOS games than the latest PS3 or XBox2 ‘megahits’. Hopefully they’ll honestly look forward to the death of the PC and it being harder to put together a game, or upload it to WiiWare.