UK-based site 'Green Man Gaming' to allow digital trade-ins

It's a smart plan, consider how much money the used game "industry" generates and now you've got it digital. Gamestop hasn't even moved into this territory yet, so it's pretty much like finding the center of the zone.

Although this is welcome, it's only welcome because it's an old model we're all used to. Adapting an old model to a new system is rarely the best idea, especially in the tech industry. The biggest issue with digital copies is the price: it doesn't reflect the absence of a game box, the making/distributing of the game box, etc. Price appropriately and 'digital trade-ins' are invalidated, for the most part.

GREENMAN!

Someone's a fan of Always Sunny in Philly.

I sure am! Wait... how did you know that?

Too bad this most likely won't be coming to PS3/360. And you know it is gonna be DRM HEAVY.

I like the idea of devs getting something from "used" game sales but I'll still not use this site, mostly cause I don't play PC games from later then the mid 90's.

What this amounts to, is a rental service.

Not exactly mindblowing, but more channels should do this.

Wait a second... What?

How could this possibly work?

I'm with you. It sounds ludicrous.

Hmm. Maybe then I might actually start buying downloadable content that's worth more than $20, since I've yet to do so yet. When you cut out production costs, shipping costs, retail costs, and the costs of paying everyone that gets the game from A to B, the price of downloadable games should come down *significantly*.

That's totally putting aside the bigger point: the value of digital games is significantly lower then that of disc based games. There's no ability to transport, loan, or sell digital games, and if something should happen to your account, you loose everything you paid for. Honestly, I wont start buying digital games until they're a good 25%-30% cheaper then retail equivilants, and that's years off in the console space.

Damn you Dallas!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v105/KrissyDisaster/GreenMan.gif

This is probably only for the PC, right? I don't see any possible way I could resell some of these unwanted games from my PSP Go.

I, for one, would be happy to subscribe to the world"s first Celtic gaming service.

This can only end in tears. Tears and cake.

I could see how this would work quite easily - because it's the same way it works currently. Someone trades in a digital copy of HL2 for, say, £5. GMG then sells it back on for £10, which would be a lower price then a brand new copy. The £10 from the "pre-owned copy" then gets split up in a similar fashion to retail titles do sans the P&P fees etc.

But, there's only as many £10 "pre-owned" copies of HL2 as the ones people have traded in. i.e. if there are 5 HL2 trade-ins, then there are 5 pre-owned copies of HL2 @ £10 a piece. Once all 5 pre-owned copies are sold, then there are no more pre-owned copies until someone trades some more in.

While this doesn't greatly benefit publishers over the "once you buy it, we wont give you your money back" scenario at first glance, it actually -does- benefit them as people will be more likely to go digital (and thus, earn more money per copy then the retail version) as they know they'll be able to get some of their money back if they don't like it.

Of course, they'll still make their money back, as the second hand copy will be more money then the money they originally gave back to the customer. Once again, this obviously doesn't make -as much- money as the current DD method, but it's more likely to entice people into buying and as long as the amount of money given still doesn't reduce the amount of profits made to the same levels made at retail, then this will take off in a big way.

tl;dr - As long as you create a virtual "limited stock" of pre-owned items and the amount of money you give back to the customer doesn't reduce the amount of profits you make to the same levels as you get at retail, then this will benefit companies greatly as you'll be able to emulate the used-games market in a much more profitable way - and this means more people will be enticed into DD as they can do trade-ins, and can get cheaper purchases, and companies will be earning more money from the increased DD sales.

Hardly a proper tl;dr but I can't really get my point across any better in a shorter paragraph.