Digital Home Thoughts: Squeezing the Life Out of the Used Game Market

"While used game retailers such as GameStop walk to the bank with big profits thanks to the margin on used game sales, the only cut game publishers and developers get is from the sale of new games. To combat this, publishers such as Electronic Arts and Sony have come up with post-point-of-sale online purchasable items that gamers are incentivized to pay for."

Game publishers naturally want all the money they can get. They are businesses, and that is why they were formed. I think it is perfectly understandable that they are trying to get a piece of the used game market. However, creating one time use keys will likely only hurt the customer in the end, as resellers like Gamestop will only adjust their prices accordingly. Ultimately, this will probably give more weight to aspiring services like OnLive, and subscription based games like World of Warcraft, more interest by gaming companies. I imagine that companies could soon make online access an integrated component for all the games they sell, and charge you for it. The infrastructure is already there. It just means that the days of stand alone games are numbered and will soon be kicked to a corner of the market.