Pre-owned market had "big" effect on Halo, says Bungie dev

Marty O'Donnell, Bungie's audio director, has warned that smaller studios face a difficult future if they can't get a return on their investment due to the sale of pre-owned games.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, O'Donnell explained that even larger titles like Halo were effected by the pre-owned games market but that he believed digital distribution would be the way to create a "system that is good and fair to both" consumers and developers.

[FreestyleBarnacle]

Because we all want to buy things but not own them. That's called rental, it's in the dictionary look it up.

[gaffyh]

what are bungie complaining about they sold like 8 million copies!! That's loads.

[Fishy Fingers]

Reading between the lines... DRM.

[gaffyh]

Yeah you know it's going to happen.

[deeznuts]

DRM is great though ... for hackers/pirates. They always get cracked.

Make a great game, people will buy it at launch. Preowned affects everyone, not just games. Sheesh.

Next thing you know, homebuilders are going to complain about the resale market and force resale homebuyers to pay a royalty or something.

[*_*]

((so people played it hated it and sold it i dont see a problem))

[thatCanadianguyisgay]

I AGREE WITH YOU SMILEY FACE

[TANOD]

ONLY MINDLESS BOTS PURCHASE THAT TRASH GAME

[RealityCheck]

Not surprising that they would tout DRM laced downloads as the solution to their problem... unfortunately that would be the start of the regular consumers' nightmares.

I buy all my games (never pirated) but go down the download-only route and people like me will either move exclusively to competitors that still use discs, start pirating, or stop playing. Your move.

[ThanatosDMC]

What about steam? I like how i could get on any computer and just download my games without having to worry about losing the disks. There are bad DRMs and good DRMs.

[RealityCheck]

@3.1 honestly I cannot comment about Steam since I stopped PC gaming years ago and I make it a policy not to comment on things I don't know. My DRM experiences come from Microsoft, Sony, Apple, etc. and so far all of them have been annoying to some level or another.

[Wildarmsjecht]

I don't know. When I have a disc based game, I like the fact that I can let a friend who wasn't fortunate enough to afford the game at the time borrow it so he can possibly enjoy it. With digital distribution who's to say thats possible given the limits that would most definately be placed on how many times you can download any given content.

If DD allows for unlimited downloads at no extra cost, i can see its appeal, but even then, they would probably be worse off because people would download them on their friends and families devices over and over again.
Theres too much to consider when it comes to DD ( I wont even get into the bandwith issue since thats something we all know by now)

[Sircolby45]

"to create a "system that is good and fair to both" consumers and developers."

*cough* BS *cough*

[FantasyStar]

....is that day I stop gaming all-together.

[schmeidenkamp]

Such a load o' crap. Its like buying a car, but having to take it back to the dealership every night, wtf. If Im dropping 60 bones on a game, I want my hard copy.

[juanvan]

This is why there is preowned..
They should get a piece of there profit Again when gamestop/EB resell the game.. That would solve all this. b/c in theory - when one trades in a game they are giving the rights of the game back to the Org seller - Just so happens its a retail store instead of the company its' self.

[pawnblue]

I'm sure you'll be happy to mail Bungie a check when you resell your game.

[vhero]

its because they didnt sell as many per console sold as the first 2 games because compared to the first 2 games it sucked. This is a pathetic excuse from a company who should stop crying about spilt milk. Honesly it takes millions to make a game which sells for £40($60 in states) compared to movies which cost more than 10X as much and sell for £10 ($16 in the states).

[kevnb]

it sold less per console because, well the 360 has other games other than Halo that people like... especially Gears of War.

[GeoffreyC]

I think the pricing of the 360's Marketplace content is evidence enough of not being all that concerned for the consumer. Take the Xbox Originals program, for instance. $15 is not a good price for those games, even for the physical copy. Most of those titles sell for less than $8, and you still have the option to lend it to a friend, give it away or get a few dollars of trade in for if you decide you are done with it.

The used game market came from a need for retailers to stay in business. If they cared so much about eliminating the used market, they would let retailers make a profit on the new games. As it stands, I spend $54-$56 on a title that I have to sell at $60. The problem comes when a title doesn't sell and the price drops in half. When that happens, which is often, I now have to sell 11 full-price games games to break even on the 11 and the 1 that dropped to $30. We have to sell the used games to be able to afford to sell the new. It is not normal retail where the retailer makes 30-70% markup. That would be heaven to us and would keep us from selling used games.

[kevnb]

and with a 5 hour campaign, this is to be expected. Especially since the other Halo games had longer and more replayable single player campaigns.

[tuaamin13]

I want infinite redownloads on my personal system, plus a way to switch systems (via console serial numbers or something) to my new console should mine break. I want to be able to switch it, not rely on some tech to do it for me.

Also, games are going to have to be AT LEAST half the price they currently are before I consider it. I'm not paying $60 for something I don't have in my hand.

[Fanboy Slaughter]

That if most people couldn't buy it pre-owned, they just flat out wouldn't buy it.

I'm not about to pay full price for a "new" game I see a year or two down the line, I'd rather pay $20 or $30 for that used game that's 2 years old and obviously no longer worth $60.

[VF34EJ25]

to add to that, some people like buying pre-owned games because usually they work just like brand new ones. it's just a disc for crying out loud.

it's not the same as if you bought a 5 year old toyota. sure it's going to be used up and not work as good as new. but a game now will be the exact same game 5 years from now (assuming the disc works).

[litaljohn]

oh wow I forgot that once I buy a car and sell it down the road I was supposed to give more money to ford..... I can't believe I was thinking when you buy something, YOU OWN IT to do with it what you want....

[Freezingduck]

Halo 1 was 10x better

[Cajun Chicken]

Proof that a lot of the time over-focus on the multiplayer section of games retard the real single player game it was sold and marketed as. Same happened with Halo 2.
I just hope that Bungie as a developer get back up to speed again soon and get the heck away from the Halo franchise after this recently teased campaign expansion.
Because you can really tell, after Halo1, they (Bungie) didn't know what the hell do do with the franchise and well thought-out universe they had thought up and were getting bored, incredibly fast with what they had created and it really shows as the games go on.
Maybe a new unrelated franchise would be a safe bet.