Today in a shocking turn of events GameStop comes out and offered more support for not banning used video games. GameStop president Tony Bartel in an interview today explained why it would be a very bad idea for either Sony or Microsoft to ban used games in their next generation consoles. First Bartel sited that GameStop survey they did a while back that shows more than 60% of consumers would not buy a console that doesn’t play used games.
However, since the survey was conducted by GameStop I don’t know how much validity anyone would put in the results. Luckily this time GameStop and Bartel came a little more prepared with some concrete numbers. According to Bartel:
“Also, used games generate more than $1 billion of trade credit annually, 70 percent of which is credited towards purchasing new games and new hardware.”
This is actually something I will side with GameStop on, banning used games will negatively affect the sale of new games. There are a lot of people who can only afford to buy new games through trading in older ones. They buy God of War Ascension beat it and then trade it in to help pay for BioShock Infinite a couple weeks later. The truth is, without the option of trading in used games a lot of people would buy less new games. In other words, banning used games may end up actually hurting the sales of new games more than having a used game industry.
What do you think; would you buy a console that bans used games?
Source: VG 24/7
