Sony: Pre-Owned Not Necessarily Hurting Games Industry
Pre-owned buyers are opinion formers
While pre-owned games sales have been demonised in some quarters of the games industry for taking money out of publishers' pockets, Sony has admitted it might not be the purely negative force some perceive it as.
“I’ve seen data that the vast majority of used sales go immediately into additional purchases, that they are not somehow being extracted from the overall game economy,” Andrew House, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO, told GameInformer.
House said that he was surprised by the discussions around DRM leading up to E3, as well as the suggestion that Sony would attempt to restrict buyers' options over what to do with their purchases.
Discussing the gamers who tend to buoy the pre-owned market, House said, “Those folks have a very strong influence. Their opinions really count, and they translate into a broader audience purchasing more games.
“I take what I hope is a balanced view on that, and it’s the balanced view that any platform holder needs to take. What I mean by that is the balance between understanding very strong concerns of folks whose lifeblood is creating great content (and making sure there is recompense for that) and the other school of thought that it’s a way for the most committed consumers to enjoy a broader range of content than they would if used games did not exist. As with many of the debates, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Our approach is, therefore, to balance those two constituencies.”
Via MCV
“I’ve seen data that the vast majority of used sales go immediately into additional purchases, that they are not somehow being extracted from the overall game economy,” Andrew House, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO, told GameInformer.
House said that he was surprised by the discussions around DRM leading up to E3, as well as the suggestion that Sony would attempt to restrict buyers' options over what to do with their purchases.
Discussing the gamers who tend to buoy the pre-owned market, House said, “Those folks have a very strong influence. Their opinions really count, and they translate into a broader audience purchasing more games.
“I take what I hope is a balanced view on that, and it’s the balanced view that any platform holder needs to take. What I mean by that is the balance between understanding very strong concerns of folks whose lifeblood is creating great content (and making sure there is recompense for that) and the other school of thought that it’s a way for the most committed consumers to enjoy a broader range of content than they would if used games did not exist. As with many of the debates, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Our approach is, therefore, to balance those two constituencies.”
Via MCV
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