Used games remain a major point of contention for most in the games industry. Publishers practically recoil in revulsion at the very word "used." When GameStop or another retailer re-sells a title, the publisher doesn't get a cent. This is something that's actually forced game makers to consider a different approach out of necessity, argues Silicon Knights boss Denis Dyack.
"What’s really happening now is people are starting to say 'why is everyone pushing towards multiplayer?' Because the used game sales are hurting the single player experience so much, they’re being forced in because of the economics, not because people who are doing single player games are saying,’We really want to do multiplayer.' It’s just a survival thing. That’s why I think cloud computing and all those things are really going to do well for the industry. It’s going to take some time, but I think it’s an eventuality," Dyack, a long-time proponent of cloud gaming, told IndustryGamers.
(photo courtesy of The Chronicle)
Dyack continued, "I think there’s a statistic I saw that most of the boutique retailers are making more money and more sales off of used games than they are off of new games. Those companies are posting record profits and the publishers and developers are laying people off. That’s a very, very, very big problem in our industry."
He believes that retailers like GameStop are pursuing digital now because the used games model will hurt the industry to the point where GameStop itself won't have a viable industry to work with. "They’re probably very serious about survival. I think, the cannibilization that they’re doing in the used games market, there have been many people in the industry saying they’re just pushing the accelerator faster to the brick wall. You’re getting guys like us saying we cannot survive under this model. Something has to change. So they’re looking at that and probably going, 'Oh crap they’re right' … and so I think they’re looking to survive," Dyack explained.
"And just to be clear, the changes that we’re going to see with cloud computing or digital downloads are not a matter of how does our industry be more swarmy and make more money. We’re talking about survival. Literally survival. How does our industry survive. When those types of economics start coming into play, you’re going to start seeing that paths of least resistance. Netflix is a really good example of cloud computing and it is starting to blow the doors off of everything... cable companies are starting to become worried because it’s so convenient for [consumers]. I’ve done a talk on cloud computing before, linear versus video game or interactive media, and there are big differences there, but I think you’re going to start seeing all digital and interactive things like Microsoft moving towards the cloud and Word over the cloud and video games are going to start being sold over the cloud because what it really really does is it protects the genre of things like single player games where stories are important, where they don’t have to be multiplayer and they can still sell."
