Perpetually under a cloud of controversy, the used game market is no stranger to damaging publisher sales. Treated as everything from a nuisance to an evil threat, pre-owned game sales continue regardless.

When questioned on how they will deal with these issues, the response is something along the lines of, “We are still evaluating various possibilities for greater participation in the used-games business.” This was the answer of Activision COO Thomas Tippl during a call to investors earlier in the week.

“What’s been working the best so far is providing additional content and therefore limiting the supply of used games,” he added. “So that’s a proven strategy that we will continue. And any other initiatives, we will be talking about when we get closer to it.”

Pretty cut and dried as far as business speak is concerned. The upturn of DLC, one time redeemable codes at purchase, and microtransactions have all been tried out as ways of continuing to draw value from games in a market that is saturated with refurbished copies. While all of this should come as no surprise, the statement of active intent (not a pun, but I’ll leave it in anyway) to combat used games is a definite change of pace. This is why we read from the script.

Posted: Aug 08, 2010 2:31 pm