Followup

Some numbers to crunch regarding that previous post about how EA is trying to get a bigger piece of the gaming pie. Actually its a literal interpretation of such a statement, a pie chart showing just whose pocket that $60 you spend on a new game goes to.

According to the chart each game costs $4 to produce, this isn't the cost of making a game but merely the cost of burning it onto a disc, packaging, shipping and so on. That leaves $56 about half of which ($27) goes to the publisher.

Now since these are the people who make the game it makes sense that they get the biggest piece of the pie. Retailers get a considerable amount ($15) which leads one to believe that if game producers sold their games directly to the public they would be able to either: a. sell a game for fifteen dollars cheaper or pocket fifteen dollars more in profit.

Retailers to play an important part in the cycle since they facilitate the transfer of the goods to the customer and the transfer of cash to the producers. It's a very imperfect cycle, one whose convenience is paid for by the consumer, and one which changes dramatically when we're talking about used games.

If a gamer sells an unwanted title to a retailer (like Gamestop) he gets considerably less then what he paid for back, the retailer then sells the game at a considerable markup from what they bought it for, to another willing customer. The retailer reeks in lots of profit (on top of what they already made from selling the game new), the manufacturer gets nothing and the consumer is able to buy the game cheaper than new.

This is the market that EA wants to crack by trying to get some of those who buy used to buy new. No I'm not trying to defend retailers (especially predatory ones like Gamestop), I'm more worried about those who buy directly from other consumers via either Amazon. eBay, Craigslist, the swap meet or whatever. When you purchase a game you reserve the right to do with that copy as you wish (except you know make and sell copies of it), when EA tries to get into the used game market they take away potential consumer to consumer transactions. Transactions which benefit the consumer because they don't have to deal with corporations who are only concerned with profits.

And that's my main problem with EA right now. Not to try to take money away from small developers, not to try to get more money to retailer$ but to increase the number of transactions and situations that require neither of these two when exchanging games.

The full article is at Double Kill.