When are 'proper' Game Shops going to learn......

[WiteWulf]

My local GAYME was selling Hitman (360) second hand for £44.99.

Aye, I've noticed that GAYME have a habit of setting the price for second hand stuff based on the current retail price of that particular game. You quite often see second hand units of a 'premium' title going for more than new units of 'lesser' titles. I guess they've got the protect their sales of new kit to a certain extent but it's a bit off.

[matt303]

My local GAYME was selling Hitman (360) second hand for £44.99.

Wouldn't surprise me if they were making more profit on that than selling a new copy, with the scale that Game and Gamestation have ramped up their second hand sales they really should pay a royalty.

[Rhythm]

Trouble with supermarkets is that whilst they can use their buying bulk to get the lowest trade price and they're happier to run at a lower margin than dedicated stores, they are awful for support in the long run. Try to buy pretty much anything not in the chart and you'll often run into problems, wheras I can still buy "first gen" Xbox1 and PS2 games in my local Game. Hell, I can find 5 or 6 year old PC titles without too much trouble.

[WiteWulf]

My local GAYME was selling Hitman (360) second hand for £44.99.

Wouldn't surprise me if they were making more profit on that than selling a new copy, with the scale that Game and Gamestation have ramped up their second hand sales they really should pay a royalty.

Indeed...I daresay they pay the punter considerably less for their copy of a game than they do the distributor. I guess that's why Sony started talking about this locking of games to consoles to prevent secondhand sales, they were getting upset about all that lost revenue.

[matt303]

Indeed...I daresay they pay the punter considerably for their copy of a game than they do the distributor. I guess that's why Sony started talking about this locking of games to consoles to prevent secondhand sales, they were getting upset about all that lost revenue.

I get upset about the lost revenue too, there will always be secondhand sales while we have physical media but the levels the games chains have taken it to is taking the piss. I think Gamestation even ran TV commercials about buying second hand games, they are almost operating like a rental outlet.


(that's the end of my rant about this)

[Tepic]

(that's the end of my rant about this)

Shame. It's a rant I could agree with. The chains are making huge profits out of pre-owned games. I can completely understand why publishers would want to pu an end to it. Unfortunatly that'll put an end to more legit uses. Taking a game to a friends place for example.

[Dio]

Serious answer: price fixing by Microsoft

M$ will set a MSRP for a product and most retailers will have to stick to that or suffer the wrath of the manufacturer when it comes to negotiating their next order. The Big Boys like Tesco, Asda/Walmart, etc can, if they want, do as they please as they have a lot more purchasing power due to their huge bulk orders.

It's another reason why it's so bloody difficult to run any sort of independent store these days.

Naah, it's a bit more subtle than that.

The Wal-mart model (which both Asda and Tesco largely run to here) is wafer-thin margins with huge turnover - you can easily see this from their profit figures. For 'non-core' business they are quite happy to sell at low single digits over cost price. VAT amplifies this effect by nearly 20% as well. Frankly, they're happy just to get customers through the door and buying their groceries where they can make a bit more money because they've squeezed the suppliers.

Only the biggest high street stores can approach the volume discounts they get, and none of them can touch the cost base the supermarkets operate on - they absolutely need their 15-20% margin per item to cover much higher fixed costs and a larger variety of stock.

It's a huge problem for games retail though. The likely result at this rate is a drop in variety of titles that can be stocked as retail focuses more on big hits or virtually abandons new in favour of 2nd hand.

And both of those are a nightmare for the innovative games industry; as has been discussed frequently before, from a developers' point of view, 2nd hand is arguably little different to piracy in that they don't get a penny; OK, so some money goes back into the industry, probably, but if you are a small developer with only one title out every two years your percentage of this is so vanishingly small as to be inconsequential.

2nd hand is a far bigger problem for small developers (who rely on decent long-tail sales) than it is for big developers or publishers.

[defsdoor]

The distribution channel is flawed. I really don't see a need for distributors or publishers in music or software today when anyone can sell direct for minimal outlays. The big fat middle-man's days are numbered.

[WiteWulf]

The distribution channel is flawed. I really don't see a need for distributors or publishers in music or software today when anyone can sell direct for minimal outlays. The big fat middle-man's days are numbered.

If the product is securely downloadable I don't see a problem with this method, but when it comes to physical goods you still need: a) a showroom of some sort where you can see and try the item in question and b) quick/instant gratification.

You can't download a 1-level demo of a TV or laptop to test before you buy it and the shoddy mail/delivery system means that once you've clicked 'buy' you're usually lucky if at arrives within a week.

[Tepic]

I have no problems with buying games that have to be downloaded, there must be some way to guarentee me access to the software indefinatly though. I really hate those downloads that give you a limited amount of installs.

If I change my computer 5 times in a year, it's my business. If in 15 years time I want to play an old game I want access to it.

If developers can guarentee me that I'd buy direct from them all the damn time.

[zip accident]

defsdoor wrote:

I really don't see a need for distributors or publishers in music or software today when anyone can sell direct for minimal outlays. The big fat middle-man's days are numbered.

Well maybe, I still like shops.

However, it does seem to me that the distribution system is going tits up in the worst way and at the same time trying to rip shops off, whose survival is the only chance for survival that the distributors have.

[gribbly]

My local GAYME was selling Hitman (360) second hand for £44.99.

Wouldn't surprise me if they were making more profit on that than selling a new copy, with the scale that Game and Gamestation have ramped up their second hand sales they really should pay a royalty.

Which is probably why they try to get you to buy the second hand copy they have instead of the shiny new sealed one you asked for.....

[PVB]

My local GAYME was selling Hitman (360) second hand for £44.99.

Wouldn't surprise me if they were making more profit on that than selling a new copy, with the scale that Game and Gamestation have ramped up their second hand sales they really should pay a royalty.

Which is probably why they try to get you to buy the second hand copy they have instead of the shiny new sealed one you asked for.....

IIRC they gave me >£30 for a trade in, so there may be some truth on both sides.

[Dio]

Wouldn't surprise me if they were making more profit on that than selling a new copy

They probably are.

The big question is whether they can get around the VAT gap issue. When I worked in a shop doing trade-in years and years ago (long before it became popular) the owner nearly crapped his pants when HMC&E demanded VAT on the full sale price, not the difference between the trade-in and the new buy. In order to fix this, we stopped selling second hand games at all and didn't fix prices on any item, which kept the VAT down.

If that has been 'fixed' now so they can only pay the VAT on the gap between the buy and the sale, then they're certainly making more profit on 2nd hand, I'd say. But I don't know the current situation.

[Sid James]

I've been buying games from our local Tesco's for ages. It was the only place in Guildford where I could walk in and buy a copy of GTA:SA on day of release and still save £££'s.

Incidently, they are doing a sale on Games/DVD/CD's at the moment (in Guildford but maybe elsewhere too). I picked up PS2 Psychonauts for £13 which I was most chuffed about.