The Problem With Second-Hand Games

All right, raise your hand if you've ever walked into a store and bought a second-hand gadget or software in the last year. Is that everyone? Okay, now listen: You're all part of the problem. At least, that's been the ongoing, low-key complaint of manufacturers and publishers for years. After all, the reasoning goes that if you buy a second-hand copy of Paper Mario for $10, you'll skip spending $50 on the latest Zelda -- and since none of that $10 goes to Nintendo, it's two problems for the price of one. The person who sold the game to the retailer is happy, the retailer's happy, and the person who bought the game from the retailer is happy, while the people who make the item actually moving through this chain are, perhaps, less happy.

Here's something that might make them a little more cranky: a recent survey revealed that 59% of gamers who play console games at least once a week bought at least one used game in the previous year; many of the folks within that segment also said that buying a used game kept them from buying at least one game they'd initially planned to buy new. The end result is that about 5% to 15% of all used games bought ate into potential sales of new games.

But is this really a problem? The study may well be accurate, but I still have a problem with the conclusions drawn from it. Whenever an industry gets testy about consumer habits, as often as not there's the assumption that we're all in some kind of closed-system, zero-sum game. Consider the RIAA's stand on file sharing and casual copying: every copied CD or song represents a lost sale. Of course, that's not true. Some people download songs they would never have bought otherwise, and some download them as a form of try-before-you-buy. That sort of gray area exists in the game world as well.

The people who make the software and hardware that gets sold this way may grumble, but I think if they take the long view they'll realize that second-hand games and hardware work to everyone's benefit. When we sold our Nintendo 64 after upgrading to a GameCube, Nintendo "lost out" on an immediate sale, but they still gained another Nintendo-playing household. They may buy most of their games second-hand, but any that they buy new (or that others buy for them) translates into sales Nintendo might not have made otherwise -- and if they liked their N64, they may well have upgraded to a GameCube or a Wii. Knowing that we could offset the price of a new console by selling the old one made us more inclined to buy the GameCube earlier. And having a comfortable resale business provides the retailers with another revenue stream that helps keep them afloat during the ups and downs of the industry, and keeps people coming into the stores, where they'll discover new games.

The real question is, instead of grumbling, what can manufacturers and publishers do to take advantage of this system? Look at the publishing industry, for example: when they're pitching to advertisers, a publication will often refer to their "pass-around" rate -- that is, the amount of times that one purchased copy will be passed along to someone else, which of course makes eyeball-hungry advertisers happy. Passing material around is exactly the kind of behavior that would make organizations like the RIAA apoplectic, but the publishing industry realizes that it's the nature of the medium and of their customers -- so they've worked it into their business model. Will the games industry find a way to do something similar?