The "Question Of The Week" feature, a specific industry-related question to be answered by professional game developers reading this site, is asking for feedback on the tricky problem of used game sales, which account for significant revenue not seen by game creators.
Recent
analyst comments on major U.S. retailers such as GameStop have noted that "the [used game] business continues to be lucrative for the retailer", thanks to a disparity between trade-in and sale prices and none of the resulting revenue returning to the game's creators.
In addition, a presentation at the recent London Games Summit had one analyst suggesting that as many as 30% of purchases originally intended to be new games were turned into used ones, by the buyer finding a used copy cheaper at the store.
Thus, the question, which can be answered at
the official Question Of The Week page until October 18th, is:
"As part of a community of game publishers and developers, do you buy used video games or go out of your way to buy new ones? If you do buy used, are you concerned about the financial implications of the used game market, or does the free market trump revenue concerns for the game business?"
As with the previous questions, the best responses will be compiled into an article to be published on the site, and users can either respond publically, with their name and company specifically cited, or anonymize their answers if they wish.
