Not long after David Braben had his semi-annual whinge about used games, Denis Dyack has joined the party and declared that used games will destroy the videogame industry as we know it. Sigh.
“I would argue that used games actually increase the cost of games,” he claimed. “There used to be something in games for 20 years called a tail, where say you have a game called Warcraft that would sell for 10 years. Because there are no used games, you could actually sell a game for a long time, and get recurring revenue for quite a while. Recurring revenue is very key.
“Now there is no tail. Literally, you will get most of your sales within three months of launch, which has created this really unhealthy extreme where you have to sell it really fast and then you have to do anything else to get money.”
Denis said that used games are cannibalizing the market, and that “there’s not going to be an industry” if it continues. Y’know, this is the kind of melodramatic rhetoric that was said about game rentals back in Dyack’s precious glory days. It also echoes what the movie industry said about VHS once upon a time.
An industry dies when those running it respond to competition by dumping burdens on the shoulders of consumers and acting like victims, rather than working to encourage customer loyalty.
Right now, we have publishers inspiring outrage and anger from its fans, we have incompetent DRM, online passes, and excessive DLC turning people off, and the mouthpieces of the market are throwing little pity party for themselves. If this industry does die, it’ll have only itself to blame.
Oh, and Dyack’s studio was responsible for X-Men: Destiny. Maybe don’t shit out a disgusting joke of a game if you don’t want people trading it in, yeah?
Pre-owned increases cost of games, cannibalizes industry, says Dyack [GI.biz]
Published: Mar 28, 2012 11:00 am