Piracy Poll

[Unofficial Who]

Running a business is all about the perceived worth of your product. Brands like Nintendo and Levi work hard to make sure that they are percieved as quality merchandise. How many second hand copies of Nintendo products do you see? Fewer than other publishers I'll bet. If your stuff is consistently sold for second hand 1) you get no profit and 2) your brand identity becomes associated with cheap products.

There's been a rumour floating about that Nintendo tend to buy up or buy back stock of their own stuff rather than have it go second hand. Certainly the case with GBA games and before that GB games. As soon as the new machine came out the old games disappeared overnight rather than being discounted.

It wouldn't suprise me if such an agreement was in place. In the book trade sometimes there are agreements in place that publishers will buy back old stock from the stores at a price to pulp rather than have it discounted.

[Dandy_Sephy]

I don't understand that logic, especially for games as it's harder to recycle the materials.

[Unofficial Who]

I don't understand that logic, especially for games as it's harder to recycle the materials.

The idea is that if you want a Nintendo game you pay full whack or miss out. It's only with the Gamecube at least in Australia they started releasing things at a "budget" pricepoint.

[Nnooo]

I am actually curious to know if you can trade in a Nintendo made game? I cannot remember ever seeing pre-owned copies of Nintendo titles. I could be wrong but I wonder if they have struck a deal with the retailers as Tskk says?

Out of idle curiosity I will be taking a look in JB Hifi here and maybe EB at the weekend. If Nintendo are doing something to prevent/restrict second hand sales then there is no reason others in the industry cannot too.

[Dandy_Sephy]

The idea is that if you want a Nintendo game you pay full whack or miss out. It's only with the Gamecube at least in Australia they started releasing things at a "budget" pricepoint.

how is paying to buy back your game better then getting a sale at a reduced cost? Knocking a fiver or tenner off the rrp is going to make them more money then them paying out to buy the game and essentially dump it. with carts they could reuse the boards and whack a new rom on there*, for optical media there is no benefit

*the "SNK method"

[Nnooo]

Yeah dunno. I imagine Nintendo would be buying it back at a smaller price than they sold it for originally. They can probably say to retailers our stuff sells so well you will unlikely have to use this offer.

-EDIT (ADDED)

If they do that they can offset the distro and printing costs for the CD (IE they pay the retailer the initial retailer cost minus manufacturing and distro) and they are no worse off. In effect the retailer has put a deposit down with Nintendo. If they don't sell it they get the deposit back.

[Dandy_Sephy]

Actually it's funny you mention it in that way, i believe they made a similar offer to the yanks when they launched the NES (for the hardware). They made them an offer they couldn't refuse, and took the risk themselves.

[Nnooo]

While that could cover unsold copies of games I am not convinced it would cover trade ins. Unless Nintendo also have a buy back policy for that too. It is very much in the realms of possibility that Nintendo have an agreement with anyone who sells their stuff that they cannot sell it used. As I say all speculation from me at the moment as I'm no where near an EB to corroborate.

[Dandy_Sephy]

Thats certainly not the case in the uk. Instead they charge about 80%rrp for the used copy, compared to lower prices for non nintendo games/other platforms (see: NSMB still being £25 pre owned, when its £30 rrp - even after this amount of time)

[Nnooo]

Ah so you can buy used Nintendo games in EB in the UK then? Probably the same here I imagine.

[Unofficial Who]

I've seen used Wii and DS games here. But usually when a format finishes up you get a lot of unused stock sold at discount.

Even now you can buy a lot of original X-Box games for not much money.

I've noticed over the years that when Nintendo starts a new format and finishes an old one the old format's games disappear from store shelves very quickly. Especially first party titles.

[Dudley]

Ah so you can buy used Nintendo games in EB in the UK then? Probably the same here I imagine.

EB has all of 2 stores last I checked in the UK (both under the GameStop brand) but yeah I assume they sell used Nintendo. Certainly other chains like GAME, Blockbuster, HMV etc do.

[Asura]

Personally I think it is about time the industry said fine if you want to sell second hand do so but you will not get any new products to sell. Currently all they are doing is biting the hand that feeds them IMO.

If the games industry tried to do that in the UK, I can guarantee you that GAME, HMV, Gamestation, CEX et al would simply say "fine, there are enough 'new' games now" and only sell preowned. The margin on their 2nd hand stock is MUCH larger than their new stock.

[therealjohnpeat]

Nintendo, Sony, EA, Microsoft not monolithic brand cultures? Right....

And Levi currently do assert that level of control. Tesco started selling Levis imported from Holland for cheap prices. Levi UK had already refused to sell them to them and so Levi took them to court and got them all stamped as grey imports. Tesco doesn't sell Levi jeans anymore.

You're just showing even more lack-of-grasp of the situation here. Nintendo, Sony, EA, Microsoft do not control every part of the process for every game their names appears upon and even if they did, they need retail and they don't control that at all.

Look at supermarkets for an example of this - supermarkets own retail food shopping and a big chunk of things like electronics, clothing etc. too. Walmart is a bad example to choose (being the largest corporation on earth making more than their next 3 competitors COMBINED) but they simply cannot be argued with by anyone supplying them whatosever - and some games chains are in a similarly powerful position in their fields.

The Levis/Tesco thing was brought to a close by EU Law - there are laws controlling the supply/distribution rights of goods within the EU which forbid retailers from getting supplies from other sources outside the EU - and again this was 1 product from 1 manufacturer - not 100s from dozens of different ones.

No retailer deals with EA, Microsoft, Nintendo etc - they deal with distributors (whom they often partly or wholly own even - see Woolworths for example) who in turn deal with publishers - who in turn are/deal with your 'monolithic corporations' - and that's a lot of people who have to get together to agree something.

The other thing this argument is wasting it's breath on is the idea that the money from pre-owned is somewhere 'disappearing' and not going into "the industry" - as I've pointed out before, this is nonsense anyway - every game sold is benefitting 'the industry' in some way.

[Dudley]

If the games industry tried to do that in the UK, I can guarantee you that GAME, HMV, Gamestation, CEX et al would simply say "fine, there are enough 'new' games now" and only sell preowned. The margin on their 2nd hand stock is MUCH larger than their new stock.

CEX already don't sell new games I think.

The Levis/Tesco thing was brought to a close by EU Law - there are laws controlling the supply/distribution rights of goods within the EU which forbid retailers from getting supplies from other sources outside the EU - and again this was 1 product from 1 manufacturer - not 100s from dozens of different ones.

Indeed, if Tesco had got the cheap Levis from inside the EU, they would have been perfectly clear legally.

[Asura]

CEX already don't sell new games I think.

I know that; I was just lumping them in with the other 2nd hand retailers.

[mushashi]

I think the industry could force competition or drive EB and their like out of business by buddying up to the Supermarkets.

I think that's just jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, the way supermarkets treat their suppliers isn't the greatest. The recent EU milk demonstrations was an interesting illustration of an industry who's costs of production weren't even being met by the prices they were being paid by their customers (primarily the supermarkets) and I doubt the supermarkets would be interested in stocking a wide range of the games industry's products, they'd be wanting to stick with the money makers mainly.

[therealjohnpeat]

Supermarkets aren't what 'the industry' wants - they pile-it-high and sell it cheap - they don't promote or market things properly - they work to tiny margins and they squeeze their suppliers so hard they often break them.

Games are marketted as a premium product and they need specialist retail to retain that - if they were converted into a regular part of the supermarket layout, you would see prices fall and quality collapse entirely I think.