[CWuestefeld]

I'm not sure if you're wrong, but it's not at all clear that you're right.

By having a real used market, there are two opposite effects on the new market:

1) Obviously, having more choices (viz purchase of a used copy) tends to pull prices down.

2) But less obviously, the knowledge that one can sell the game when complete means that a buyer would be willing to pay more up front. That is, today they pay $X new, and that represents the total investment. But with resale, they pay $X' up front, but later recover $Y later when they sell it.

The question is what is the equilibrium between these two countervailing forces?

[im3w1l]

You need to consider the following strategy. Buy game, play for 20h straight. Sell game. Physical media have transaction costs, but for digital copies it will be as easy as pushing a button.

Either doing this is dirt cheap (say less than $1). If it is not dirt cheap, then it means that the game must depreciate hundreds of dollars per year. Which means the starting price must be like $1000.

People wont pay $1000 for a game, so the second case is impossible. Hence, it means that it will be dirt cheap to buy-play-sell. This may be a big threat to the current model.

[Fnoord]

> You need to consider the following strategy. Buy game, play for 20h straight. [...]

On average, people don't play a game for 20 hours straight. Even I could not do this during a World of Warcraft release, and most people don't. The few who do are outliers.

Most people sleep 8 hours a day, have a household, a job, school, etc. Even a "weekend no-lifer" (which I suppose is more common than a "complete no-lifer") can only play for about 16 hours a day on 2 days a week in the weekend, and that assumes they have no real-life responsibilities. People like that are most likely teenagers (even though these have homework).

> Either doing this is dirt cheap (say less than $1). If it is not dirt cheap, then it means that the game must depreciate hundreds of dollars per year. Which means the starting price must be like $1000.

> People wont pay $1000 for a game, so the second case is impossible.

Sorry, why must the start price be $1000? This makes no sense.

If you want us to consider a strategy, you need to present a plausible one, with plausible data.

Right now, if you want to buy a game cheap, you can already on G2A (circumventing things as region lock). I believe this is going to render the need to wait for discounts (which I currently use) less. If game developers simply quit with all and every discounts (some already do) then the resale value will stick. The amount of people who play a game, might increase as well, and as long as the game retains value over time the first hand and second hand price will stay the same.

Ultimately, the model of selling licenses might have to adapt to the situation, but that is a Good Thing IMO. The way it should work with content, is that people invest money in it, and then these people get an exclusive right to play it first ie. crowdfunding model. Unfortunately, the rights of investors on crowdfunding are currently very low, but that is merely a legal problem. You can certainly keep game licenses sparse right after release, but it increases the urge for piracy because people in non-West can't afford.

[yellow_postit]

It may also push toward more one-time consumable items in the digital medium.

[FreeKill]

I also agree that #2 is greatly overlooked. I know, personally, I would have purchased many games in the past, if I had an option to resell it for even half the price I paid for it. Instead, I end up waiting 12+ months until that game comes down in price commensurate with the value I believe it to be worth.

This applies a lot to single player games that will take 10-20 hours to complete like the newest Tomb Raider series or Deus Ex series, where I'm sure I will enjoy them, but not enough to spend $70+ on them.