Oooops. I watched it.
And again, I think he's totally fucking retarded. Luckily, he annoying as shit personality didn't convince me to play devil's advocate, it just convinced me to point out that he went about this totally sideways and is .....well, wrong.
Killing off the used game market is bad for two groups of people:
1.) People who buy used games
2.) People who sell used games
Pretty simple, right? Killing off the used game market is awesome for the following groups of people:
1.) Publishers
2.) Developers
3.) Hardware manufacturers
Killing off the used game market really doesn't matter to the following groups of people:
1.) People who don't buy used games
2.) Everyone else
So, taking the first set of groups into account, why in the fuck would you focus your argument on the people selling the games? No one gives a fuck and no one SHOULD give a fuck about the sellers. They've been living the dream and they probably had opportunity to head this off, and yet didn't - like the music industry they kinda missed the boat.
His claim of $2 per game sold for a retailer is skewed. At one point I had access to the information regarding how much a retailer I worked for (not as sales staff) actually pulled in on everything in the store and Pug is right - it was a lot closer to $10 a unit. Basically, if you're a sales person for a business which sells big ticket items and pays off of commission on said items, you can basically pull a number out of the computer that is the "cost". That's basically the minimum amount you can sell an item for and have the store "break even". This, however, is not the actual COST of the item to the store but that's probably where his $2 figure comes from because that's what an employee on the floor sees. What it actually is is the COST of the item + the sum of the averages of all the variable costs the store predicted they would encounter whilst attempting to sell this item + the minimum amount of profit margin the store was willing to settle for. Note that in almost any other business but retail the sum of the averages of all the variable costs would be covered by overhead and profit, but in this case it was separated (double dip!). I can't remember what the average rate on that for a video game was, as they were all segmented but item types, but it was realistically about 8-12% allocated to minimum profit margin - potentially higher because they were a price locked and sure sell item.
I remember the actual number being closer to $15 per unit of actual (arguable) profit for the store. That's a shit ton for a small item that brings people into your store on a regular basis (that's the real value for big box stores). The reason for the $2 number is two fold - 1.) it was artificially low because the retailer didn't want to offer an item at "cost" that a lot of employees would buy regularly, 2.) in the case of video games especially, the hidden profit was quite high, as a ton of the costs usually associated in that section were actually covered by by businesses other than the retailer there (was?) also a monetizing system in place for shelf space but I don't remember a thing about it.
So, the retailers are making a fair margin for sure. They are not on actual consoles, if I remember correctly, but that was offset by the high margins on the games and especially the shelf space and marketing program that they had.
The thing is that places like Gamestop were really living the dream. They were selling a product, making a profit on it, buying it back for below market value, and then selling the same product again above market value. Possibly multiple times a year, times millions. And while doing so, they were driving people into their locations in order to be subjected to further marketing for more products and putting them in front of the register where they could make snap decisions to buy whatever came out new again that week. It is seriously every retailers dream a perpetual motion machine of selling the same product for money numerous times with zero liability and someone else covering at least half of the marketing. And it was good for consumers if you want to buy a used game. No one can argue that.
That said, it was absolutely a shit deal for publishers, developers, and hardware manufacturers and obviously, the second they CAN cut that guy out they fucking will. And that's what you see here. No one is being evil, no one is being unfair, they're acting exactly how we should expect them to act. And I can't really blame them.
I have more to say, but this is way to long and I'm just going to stop there.
