As far as publishers are concerned, the single greatest cancer they face is the resale market. When a store sells a new game for £60, the publisher makes about £20, and the store gets between £15-20, depending on how they choose to price it. The rest is the cost of manufacturing and shipping. (These are rounded estimates, it varies)
Then, a week later, when someone trades that game in and the store resells it for $40, they get all of that, and the publisher gets nothing.
From their perspective, that’s basically theft, which is why they’ve been trying for decades to put a stop to it, which they can’t, or at least make more money from secondary sales by bundling single-use codes for “bonus” content that really should be part of the main game, which people who buy preowned will have to shell out extra for.
So that’s what getting rid of physical media is all about. If they get rid of the discs and cartridges, that market vanishes.
Please don’t mistake this explanation as an excuse. All of the platform holders have had the means to kill off the retail market and usher customers onto their digital storefronts for at least a decade. All they had to do was pass on even a fraction of the savings they make selling digitally, which cuts out the manufacturing, shipping, and retailer costs, onto the customer. But they haven’t. Games cost the same on the Playstation Store as they do on the Gamestop Shelf. Sometimes more!
They could have used the carrot, but pure greed means they’re now opting for the stick.
Edit, Supplemental Question: This is my first post on Lemmy, and the responses have me wanting to clarify something- Is everyone on this platform fucking mental?
This is so much bigger than the secondary resale market, which is a small added bonus for them
The move from physical media; the price of computer components rising beyond reasonable levels; the locking down of hardware; the locking down of software distribution methods; the inevitability of de-anonymizing all Internet users…
The capitalist class has had enough of your criticism. We discovered their little criminal playground that preyed on children, we discovered how they hide their wealth without contributing back to society, we even discovered how government programs meant to “keep us safe” are used to exploit everyone on earth.
You think Sony ending physical discs is about video games? Brother it’s about the mind prison they’re designing to keep you in line while they fuck preteens on yachts until this whole planet burns to the ground
Extrapolating a consumer usability problem into grandiose, vague fearmongering of the ultra-rich Epstein class isn’t helping anyone. It’s more likely to make people defeatist.
If you actually care about things like tax havens, or believe they have a relation to this issue, show people what they can do to fight them.
There is such a huge library of games made over the previous 30ish years. We really need new console games? Fuck it. Bring back vintage games. They were fun then and they are fun now
I think that big game publishers have found that there’s a real ceiling for what people are willing to pay for games, and direct digital sales are the only way they can drive up their share of that amount.
Game prices have not kept up with inflation over the past 30 years. If you cut the production costs and you cut out the reseller’s margin, that equals more revenue for first-party titles. And it further sweetens the pot for console companies because they can take a cut of third-party titles that go through their stores. (Third-party developers still save on physical production and distribution, so it’s a win for them, too.)
Not to mention the overall move toward software-as-a-service subscriptions across the board. If they can take your one-time $70 purchase and convert it into a monthly $5 subscription fee, now you’re paying $130 for the first year and $60 per year afterward for that game.
I have games from 25 years ago that I still play. I feel really sorry for young gamers because they probably won’t even have the option to revisit some of their old faves 25 years from now.
(I’m working my way through Castlevania: Circle of the Moon right now. It’s not the best entry in the series, but it has its charms.)
There is more than one benefit to ending physical media.
- The end of the resale market
- The end of paying for physical distribution.
- Pushing users toward online gaming so that they can pay for microtransactions.
- Live service games and seasons that require subscriptions.
- The sale of hardware that will allow them to charge more for consoles/Harddrives.
- Game streaming (which requires an internet connection, and allows them to gather information about users).
- Game streaming that requires a whole separate online subscription.
If you thought it was just about the resale market I have some public landmarks for sale.
🏴☠️
They could have used the carrot, but pure greed means they’re now opting for the stick.
By raising the prices for all their games, raising them again for physical copies, and allowing the use of game key cards, Nintendo decided the carrot or stick alone just wasn’t profitable enough, and thus chose both.
That… uh… what?
Do you not understand the “carrot and stick” metaphor?
You listed three times Nintendo used the “stick” then claimed they opted to use both, I assume in an attempt to sound clever.
Does everyone on this platform have long covid or something, because these replies are really worrying!
Anyway, yeah, Nintendo suck ass, well done.
The $60 → $70 price increase was just Nintendo being greedy, so the metaphorical “carrot” in this context is raising the price of physical copies to $80 to make the digital price seem like a good deal in comparison (diminishing physical sales further as an excuse to get rid of them entirely), while the “stick” is the game key cards that take any meaning away from owning physical media in the first place.
In any case, disagreement is no reason to insult the intelligence of other users.
Fair enough, sorry.
I had just finished reading the top voted response, which says Sony killing discs is about billionaires fucking children and may have misdirected my consternation toward you.
Fucking obviously…
Did people really just figure out their hate for discs was the hate for resellers and rentals?
Fucking hell man, next you’re gonna tell us they sell consoles at a lost to trap consumers in their ecosystem of expensive games and not out of the goodness of their heart.
If you just fucking realized this, it’s better than not.
But it doesn’t mean you should be listened to, because everyone that actually cares enough to string two thoughts together figured this out fucking years/decades ago.
Is everyone on this platform fucking mental?
So many simps for valve who don’t understand how valve fucked us all 20 years ago.
Just remember if valve cared at fucking skill they could offer you a resellable license.
But yeah, fuck Windows, because reasons. Lemmy.txt
I don’t want to resell anything, I don’t care.
Valve has been very good to me. I can play my library on any machine I want, anywhere I want. They have kept titles available for me to download that the publisher took down.
They keep my save files, they provide overlays in game, they provide a game recording and chat system.
Everything I buy from them is so deeply narked down that reselling isn’t even worthwhile anyways.
On top of all of that they contribute to a free os, including giving back upstream.
That’s not simping, those are just facts. Basically so far it’s the best gaming service yet.
I do worry it will go away, but all the games are also backed up locally so it really doesn’t matter that much.
By the way: Valve works well in conjunction with game devs. My kids buy box sets that come with physical items (guides, books, stickers, figures, and discs) AND have valve keys. So they get the best of both worlds. Supporting indy devs is far more important than arguing about valves position in all of this.
You okay?
So, like, don’t buy things that aren’t worth the cost, man.
Library memberships are free.
So, I assume you’re making the point that, instead of buying games I should just get a library card and borrow them for free?
Well for one, that’s not a service all libraries offer, but even if they did, you’re raising it in response to a discussion about physical media being phased out.
How is “just get a library card” gonna solve the problem when the libraries won’t have a disc for me to borrow?
Or you might just be making the point that games are dumb and we should just read books. Hard to tell.
One thing to point out is, consumers haven’t gained so much from the secondhand market; GameStop quite often took a lot of the value of the turn-in copy, and even pushed 2hand games as new.
There’s hobby stores where this isn’t the case, and obviously friends can trade/sell in private. But it’s not a lot of what tended to happen.
When looking at that $40 resale, some publishers had instead suggested “Hey, how about we sell for $35 to both of you, and neither of you can resell it.” That nets the publisher more money, and means the second person pays less. Obviously, that relies on the publisher deciding that reduction. But it’s hardly the only consumer good/service whose price is controlled by its maker that way. Try reselling used bread, or used movie tickets.
Steam very successfully destroyed the resale and lending of PC games and the same approach with digital rights management of downloads will do the same to the consoles.
Used games held the console market in balance. You knew if you didn’t like a game, you could trade it and get something back, or at least buy a cheap used copy if you weren’t sure on a title.
The PC game market is kept in balance by constant discounting and availability. You manage risk by saying “I’ll wait a few years and get it for $4.98 instead.”
The presence of secomdary sellers (Fanatical, Humble Bundle etc) and even distinct markets (GoG, itch, service games that sell through their own accounts) means Steam still doesn’t have the same market-defining power Sony will in a post-disc world.
Dude cdkeys were already a thing before steam. There wasn’t really ever a secondhand pc game market.
Of course there was. It was very much alive on our schoolyard. (A “market” doesn’t need a man in the middle siphoning off a profit for it to exist.)
You could write down CD keys and put them in the case, you know?
That didn’t work. If you tried to play online with a CD key that someone else had already used, it wouldn’t let you.
Steam very successfully destroyed the resale and lending of PC games
What?!
You think before Steam people could resell and loan PC games like console?!
Why just make shit up? You know Steam ain’t that old and people remember pre-Steam…
Right?
I think steam might be older than BrightCandle@lemmy.world…
You forgot the leading
and your username mention turned into a mailto link.
Gamestop has become TOO POWERFUL!
given who’s running that show these days, i wouldn’t shed a tear if they got run out of business.
Sony are stopping production of optical drives, of which the Playstation was a tiny proportion.
Please don’t mistake this explanation as an excuse.
Threadiverse does this often.
It even uses the “worth reading” system as an incorrect way of saying “I dis/agree.” Can’t wait for pylova to become the norm.trades that game in and the store resells it for $40, they get all of that, and the publisher gets nothing.
In some countries, resale laws exist to deter this. So this argument is kinda naught.
I’m new to Lemmy, so I literally don’t understand your first point, but-
In some countries, resale laws exist to deter this. So this argument is kinda naught.
I don’t see how. The only resale laws that I can find in the US, UK, Eu or even Japan refer to prohibiting Digital Resales. Even in Japan, publishers haven’t been able to prohibit the reselling of physical games.
So no, the point stands; Publishers want to get rid of physical media in order to push people onto digital licenses, which are more restrictive and non-transferable.
