Halo dev: Fight used game sales with lower prices

Posted February 11, 2012 by James Archer in Industry News, News.

Mark Karch, CEO of Halo: Anniversary developers Saber Interactive, has argued publishers should reduce used game sales by making new games cheaper rather than rendering second-hand games unplayable.

Rumours that the next Xbox would include measures to combat the used game market may have been music the ears of certain developers and publishers, such as Volition‘s Jameson Durall, but it isn’t just customers that aren’t loving the idea. Mark Karch – CEO of Saber Interactive, of Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary and Inversion fame – has spoken out against used game-blocking over on CVG. According to Karch, forcing gamers to keep a relatively expensive game, even if it’s a stinker, is unfair, and lowering the price of new games by making them digital would be a win-win:

“As long as games are distributed on physical medium as physical goods, players should have the right to buy and sell them. $60 is a lot to pay for a game and if a player buys a dud and is stuck with it, then that’s just not fair to force him to keep it. If people buy Inversion and it’s not for them, then why should they be forced to turn it into a drink coaster?… For me the approach is to bring the cost of games down and to sell them as digital content where they can’t be bought and sold. If someone pays $15 for a game, then it’s less painful if they need to keep it.“

Karch also advocated splitting up games with single- and multiplayer components and selling each at half-price, encouraging day-one purchases and reducing trade-in value.

Gaming has indeed been shifting in a more digital direction, with the success of such platforms as Steam, Xbox Live Arcade and the PSN Store, as well as iOS and Android gaming. Still, prices don’t seem to be falling as a result – something Karch overlooks. What do you think would be the most consumer-friendly intervention in the used games market? Is such a thing even possible?

Stick with BeefJack for the latest on the next-gen Xbox.

Tagged as Digital distribution, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Inversion, Mark Karch, piracy, saber interactive, Used Games, xbox 720