"Are you sewious Dad?!?" > GAMESTOP Commercial

[HanoiBoi]

This commercial just caught me by surprise.  When it came on, my 2 boys and I just kinda stopped what we were doing to watch it.  We all laughed in unison when it was over.  Pretty amusing stuff!

Happy holidays!

[wp34]

I was wondering what all the hubbub was about at first.  But I laughed out loud at the end.  That was cute.

[Ginsu Victim]

Yeah, that was pretty good.

[Malenko]

at least they stopped shoving the rabbit down our throats.

[WhereEaglesDare]

What kind of mutants shop at GameStop these days?!

[FrizzleFried]

Nevermind...

[MidnightClubbed]

Gamestop - Killing the game industry one pre-owned title at a time.

[hypernova]

Meh...

[RandyT]

Gamestop - Killing the game industry one pre-owned title at a time.

Since the game industry prices its new products such that it creates a market for pre-owned titles, it would be more accurate to state that the game industry is killing itself.

Funny commercial.

[MidnightClubbed]

I agree that 'full price' games may be too expensive for some people, but Gamestop are the dominant game retailer in the US and they are encouraging people to buy used rather than new, and so are choking the developers and publishers.  For the developers they might as well be selling pirate copies. 
That $5 you generally save off a full-price game can quite easily be saved with an amazon order, or by waiting a few weeks for a price deal.

This (and piracy) is pushing the games companies much more quickly towards digital download and subscription services as they see their costs rising and profits falling.  Hopefully the market will rebalance prices at that point.

[Lilwolf]

um... games have never been cheaper.  Games have always been in the 30-60 buck range, all the way back to the apple / commidor days for new games.  And people have always sold games second hand or traded.  There is just a company doing it...  Funcoland did this like 15-20 years ago.  I think there are just more options, and the games are in some cases shorter.

But now game companies can do things like sell their games online (steam).  Require online and interactive online registration that can stop this...  Or heck, have the game 100% online (mmog). 

Or heck, give either cheap / free updates making the game worth owning for more then a few weeks / months. 

I think the game companies should stop worrying too much about resales of games and making sure the game is worth the price.

[RandyT]

I agree that 'full price' games may be too expensive for some people, but Gamestop are the dominant game retailer in the US and they are encouraging people to buy used rather than new, and so are choking the developers and publishers.  For the developers they might as well be selling pirate copies. 
That $5 you generally save off a full-price game can quite easily be saved with an amazon order, or by waiting a few weeks for a price deal.

This (and piracy) is pushing the games companies much more quickly towards digital download and subscription services as they see their costs rising and profits falling.  Hopefully the market will rebalance prices at that point.

Physical media is but a tiny amount of their production costs. It adds significant perceived value and people still want something physical when they lay out $50 for something.  Understand that the ability to re-sell something is taken into account by the consumer for every purchase they make that isn't considered a consumable, and video games haven't quite reached that bar.  The ability to turn these $60 games around later are what fuels, I would say a good portion, of those sales.  Stop making that possible, and those sales will wane considerably. 

The popularity of used games is simply the market speaking in a loud clear voice that new titles are too expensive.  If the game companies want to address that, and very likely open the market up for gamers who may never buy a title while in it's main life cycle, encouraging more on-line play and use of those services, they know what to do.  They just don't want to, because as much as they complain about it, the model is still working for them.  At last count, Black-ops has pulled in 250 million....not too shabby, regardless of how many of those get resold.

RandyT

[RayB]

I remember saving up and buying "Hacker" by Activision for the C64 (1985?) for $35.

If you're patient and can wait 6 months, often times games today that were $50 or $60 end up selling for $20-$30 new. You want the luxury of "right now", that's your choice and you pay for that choice. Except Nintendo's own games. Those NEVER seem to get discounted 

[RandyT]

I remember saving up and buying "Hacker" by Activision for the C64 (1985?) for $35.

There were also only about 20 million C-64 / C128 systems sold in over a 10 year period.  Just the 360 has more than 2 1/2 times as many units sold in less than half that time.  Considering that titles are now pretty easily ported from one system to another, the total market size is even much larger for a title.  More possible sales make it much easier to recoup investments (and much, much more) today than it ever was in the 80's.

If you're patient and can wait 6 months, often times games today that were $50 or $60 end up selling for $20-$30 new. You want the luxury of "right now", that's your choice and you pay for that choice.

The gaming industry should adopt a similar strategy to that of what the movie industry currently does with Blu-Rays.  For about a week, a new title is sold at a good price.  After that, it goes up and you can wait a while for it to come back down, unless there is a promotion of some nature.  This would give folks a chance to get in on a new title while everyone is still playing it on-line, and some occasional price fluctuations would wreak havoc on the used markets price structure.  As I stated, there are things they can do to keep much of their profits from going to Gamestop.  But they would need to let go of the idea of "having their cake and eating it too", which they are loathe to do.

[LeedsFan]

At last count, Black-ops has pulled in 250 million....not too shabby, regardless of how many of those get resold.

RandyT

The thing is games like Black Ops and other online games and MMORPGs need a registration code to activate them. And once that is used the game cannot be resold. I never see any used titles of WoW or FFXI on sale.

[WhereEaglesDare]

well yea because they are PC games, and they dont resell FFXI for PS2 cuz nobody wants to buy it!

[RayB]

Considering Wow is a free download or $5 in store now, I wouldn't expect to see it "used". You're paying for a monthly service and an account with WoW, the media is "free".

[MidnightClubbed]

I remember saving up and buying "Hacker" by Activision for the C64 (1985?) for $35.

There were also only about 20 million C-64 / C128 systems sold in over a 10 year period.  Just the 360 has more than 2 1/2 times as many units sold in less than half that time.  Considering that titles are now pretty easily ported from one system to another, the total market size is even much larger for a title.  More possible sales make it much easier to recoup investments (and much, much more) today than it ever was in the 80's.

Porting a AAA game from one platform to another will typically take several man years of work (assuming you are doing a half decent job), even games developed simultaneously on multiple platforms will need sub-teams of platform specialists - porting down from PC to Wii/DS/PSP will generally need a lot of changes to art as well as substantial programming effort.  Probably far more time than the total development effort on any C64 game.

The gaming industry should adopt a similar strategy to that of what the movie industry currently does with Blu-Rays.  For about a week, a new title is sold at a good price.  After that, it goes up and you can wait a while for it to come back down, unless there is a promotion of some nature.  This would give folks a chance to get in on a new title while everyone is still playing it on-line, and some occasional price fluctuations would wreak havoc on the used markets price structure.  As I stated, there are things they can do to keep much of their profits from going to Gamestop.  But they would need to let go of the idea of "having their cake and eating it too", which they are loathe to do.

That is happening more and more, typically Target and Frys here in CA will have the weeks new releases at some discount.  Amazon often do the same thing with gift card bundles for first week sales.  Prices then slowly drop up to the game going greatest hits after a year (and to $30 or $20).  You really need a much larger number of consumers before you can make games for dvd/blu-ray type prices - unless you want the production values to drop. 
But I do absolutely agree that $60 is way too much for most people (myself included) unless it's an absolute must have game (GT5 did it for me this month).  Hopefully at some point games are so mainstream that there are hundreds of millions of players and prices can drop substantially - unless you count Farmville in which case it's here already and it looks remarkably like a C64 game!

[RandyT]

Porting a AAA game from one platform to another will typically take several man years of work (assuming you are doing a half decent job), even games developed simultaneously on multiple platforms will need sub-teams of platform specialists - porting down from PC to Wii/DS/PSP will generally need a lot of changes to art as well as substantial programming effort.  Probably far more time than the total development effort on any C64 game.

Maybe.  It took an awful lot to make a good game on a C-64.  It was all bit-twiddling.  No huge (in relative terms) amounts of memory and storage, no amazing graphics hardware, no high level C-language programming and portability, no incredible tools (other than what developers made for themselves), no ready made game engines, etc.  In the case of vintage hardware, you can't just look at the end result and gauge what went into it, without having spent some time there yourself.  Some of what was accomplished in those titles, with that hardware and at that time in history, could only be done by a very, very small number of individual on the planet.  Some games still took years because they had far fewer people involved.  But the income from those games was also tiny compared to today.  A lot of those C-64's also weren't used as game consoles, so the market was even smaller than it might seem.

And most of the conversion of graphical work on the major platforms can be automated.  That's a huge dent in the process.  Once you start talking about "porting down" to a handheld, it's not really a "port" anymore, rather a different game based on the same franchise.  As such, it has little to do with the sales figures of ported titles (which few would say are usually done very well).

As for production values, they make some of the games amazing, while others seem to use those "production values" to mask lousy gameplay.  If 45 minutes of cinema-quality CGI cut-scenes, that gamers might sit through once, is driving the production costs to such high levels, I think much of the market would be willing to give that up for good gameplay at a more reasonable price.

[DirtyDachshunds]

The 3 armed celebration of the kid needs to be made into a gif

...then added as my profile pic 

[shateredsoul]

creepy! i liked it!

Anyways, man.. seriously? Used games have always been around. When the original Nintendo was new, used games were a big things. I remember you coudl buy them at small game shops, from friends, flea markets/swapmeets. It was awesome. Less people bought games in general back then, so why is it an issue now? Because more people are buying and that % of people buying used is now pretty big.

I'd buy used even if I had to do it at swapmeets or ebay. I buy new when it's a game I really am excited about.

The biggest change seems to be the overflooding of the market with used games. People buy and sell used right after, if you don't want them to sell make something someone wouldn't want to sell back to a game store. I'd say the sweet spot is 6 months after a game is released. YOu can often buy it for $20 used sometimes new. it goes up after that because then it become a collectible I guess.

[LeedsFan]

One of the other problems with buying new in recent years is the tendency for games to be released unfinishedmany bugs. This is particularly prevalent with RPG type games. Dragon Age: Origins and Fall Out New Vegas are prime examples of this. Fans pay full price and are in effect final Beta testers! 

If you wait 6-12 months you can pick that game up for a bargain price and at the same time get it patched to iron out most of the initial problems. Publishers are far too quick to release games these days before they are ready.

[shateredsoul]

yup, that's what going online has really brought to gaming. Giving the developers the opportunity to say, "We'll patch it later". I played online and it's great, but I really do miss playing against people who were actually in the room. That was way more fun. Part of it is that life has changed since I was a kid too. ha ha

[rlemmon]

I actually like gamestop myself. We just now got one in town. It's nice to be able to go down and look around and grab something rather than order it.  It suprises me that people are willing to buy there used games for $5.00 less than new. I have tried to buy gamecube games from them a few times in the past but they were always scratched to hell and back. Nice commercial btw.

[Malenko]

The thing is games like Black Ops and other online games and MMORPGs need a registration code to activate them. And once that is used the game cannot be resold. I never see any used titles of WoW or FFXI on sale.

Black Ops does not require a code. And I used to be opposed to Jims stance until all my local gamestops started trying to push used copies of games on me when I wanted a new one. Then right after trying to push a used copy on me in the next breath they were trying to get me to pre-order something else! The only time I ever took a used copy over a game I wanted new was when the new copy was the copy the employees took out and the seal was broke and the disc was already scratched.

[RandyT]

The only time I ever took a used copy over a game I wanted new was when the new copy was the copy the employees took out and the seal was broke and the disc was already scratched.

There's another really compelling reason to save that $5 off a recent release.  If you are a member of their "club" you get an extra 10% off pre-owned games, and on top of that, they have their "3 for 2" and "buy one get another 50% off" sales only on pre-owned, so that can turn into a heck of a discount.  Additionally, I have found that it's a lot easier to return or exchange a pre-owned title with them than a new one.  So folks who are claiming it's only a $5 difference seem to be taking the narrow view of the advantages to buying used.

[wp34]

Additionally, I have found that it's a lot easier to return or exchange a pre-owned title with them than a new one. 

That is the main reason I shop there.  I've returned several games that did not hold my interest after a week.  Gamestop lets you return a used game no questions asked.

[MidnightClubbed]

My original argument was not that the pre-owned market is bad, just that Gamestop as the dominant retailer are pimping pre-owned over new and deliberately harming the people who make the games they try to sell.  Use the local mom and pop (if one exists) or ebay to buy used games

It's all pushing the industry to online/streamed/rental, don't be surprised if traditional retail packaged games no longer exist in 5 years.

[RayB]

Well, you know pre-owned games killed the Dreamcast.

[RandyT]

It's all pushing the industry to online/streamed/rental, don't be surprised if traditional retail packaged games no longer exist in 5 years.

I'll be VERY surprised.  You can't sell what consumers don't want (*cough..PSP-GO..cough*) unless it's a "deal they can't refuse".  As I stated before, the duplication and retail distribution is such a small part of the costs, getting rid of it will probably never equal in savings what it would take in price drops to get the buying public to give up the possibility for recouping some of their cost on the re-sale.

Well, you know pre-owned games killed the Dreamcast.

More like bad timing and a system that wasn't secure enough to prevent casual pirating.

[RayB]

Well, you know pre-owned games killed the Dreamcast.

More like bad timing and a system that wasn't secure enough to prevent casual pirating.

Did you hear a whooshing sound?

[Malenko]

I didnt say I dont buy pre-owned games, I buy them all the time. Sometimes I just wanna buy it new, support the developers and what not. The thing about 2 of my 3 (or 4?) local gamestops is they dont just politely offer, they try to talk you into it like a used car salesman. The one store I dont go to anymore pushed so hard and was such an assclown about it I told him I didnt want it new anymore and left.

I have a gamestop card, at least the magazine doesnt suck like it did when I worked at FunCoLand and had to push cleaning kits.

[Malenko]

The best part about FuncoLand was they would always try to sell you dirty cartridges.   

We were told not to clean them, that way when a customer came back with "a game that didnt work", we could tell them their system was dirty, clean the cart in front of them and make it work. Usually they'd buy a cleaning kit, so I cant say it wasnt effective "marketing" Needless to say, I didnt work there long.

[RandyT]

Did you hear a whooshing sound?

I took a chance.  Someone probably took you seriously.

BTW, emoticons are your friend.