The 'Real' Cost Of Used Games

First up read this, it's Richard Browne (pictured below) from umm, well he's an industry veteran okay. And he's finally willing to bring to the table that much missing piece of evidence to prove that pre-owned games are killing kids, raising house prices and toppling the game industry. At last. Some actual evidence to scrutinise rather than a dev sounding off because their last poorly marketed shite game that sat on the shelves for two weeks didn't sell as much as Wii Sports. That key piece of evidence?

A colleague of mine brought to light how bad this has become just the other week. He went into his local GameStop and was point blank REFUSED the option of buying the game he went to get new. After pressuring the sales assistant for a few minutes he finally got his new game - but only after the assistant got his manager's approval to sell it to him. [via Gamesindsutry international]

Ah, okay. That appears to be an anecdote and a suspiciously tall tale. Browne then goes on to mention the death of single player gaming. No really. Poor gaming. PC gaming is perpetually dying, Couch co-op gaming is dead. Add single player games to that list. That leaves ARGs and online multiplayer games, you know like L.A Noire, Zumba Fitness, Mass Effect, Batman Arkham City, Assassin's Creed and all those console RPGs and virtually every other game that did well last year. Oh well dead. Long live single player.

Oh wait someone who can actually write over at Wired called it. Read that instead. That uses facts and data rather than feelings to show that Browne should be added to long list of games people who totally abuse the platform they have to play scapegoat. We're going to keep saying it until someone listens: can someone please wake us when game industry professionals grow up and decide they want to run businesses rather than the billion dollar unstable backward sham of an industry it is now?