GameStop ‘understands’ publishers’ pre-owned misgivings

The pre-owned games sector is very beneficial to the health of the overall games sector, retailer GameStop has argued.

Though they rarely express the opinion publicly, many publisher execs consider pre-owned games as unfairly robbing them of revenue that is instead reserved exclusively for retailers.

But GameStop’s executive VP Mike Mauler says data suggests otherwise.

I can understand the feelings. [But] we’ve sat down with developers and publishers and really gone through the data,” he told Edge. I personally think there’s a lot of benefit to the publisher.

"A great example is sequels, where there’s a large percentage of people who are just not going to spend $60 every single year without being able to do something. They’ll look at their shelf and see tenFIFAs,Pro Evos orMaddens.

"Being able to take the older one and do something with it in order to buy the next version is really important to consumers. That drives new sales quite a bit."

Mauler also downplayed the impact of Online Passes, which prevent second hand buyers from accessing certain features unless they fork out an additional premium.

"Our data says that used customers play a lot less online than new customers," Mauler. "The number’s very low – like 15, 20 per cent.”