Continuing the battle between publishers and pre-owned games, Bungie Sound Director Marty O’Donnell has offered his two cents on what’s been going on and how best to reach a resolution, as well as the surprising thought that Halo, a game which has sold absolute tons within a day of its release, actually suffered due to the market:
It’s hard to gauge the effect of used game sales on Halo, but I’m sure it’s big. Complaining about sales when you have a multi-million seller is somewhat difficult to justify, but it seems to me that the folks who create and publish a game shouldn’t stop receiving income from further sales.
It will be harder for smaller titles to be successful in the future if they can’t fully realise a return on investment. Eventually, digital distribution is probably going to be the way most people purchase content and hopefully developers, publishers, and retailers will figure out a system that is good and fair for both the consumer and the creators of that content. I don’t worry that much about the middle man, he always makes out just fine. — Marty O’Donnell, to GamesIndustry.biz
I’m more or less in agreement. So far, digital distribution seems to be helping provide a more inexpensive business model for both publishers and consumers, which is the main reason the latter would buy used in the first place. God knows I’d buy a lot more games if they all cost less.
On the other hand, it seems that the price for digital titles remains more or less fixed, which would put an end to waiting for the prices to come down.
