Buying Pre-Owned

I'm not one to horde games. While my film collection may be bigger than my bed I've for around the last 6-7 yars I've oly kept games which are either online or those which i just can't sell, such as Kotor. as such I think the last game i purchased full price would have been Fifa, at a Tesco knock down of £25. So when I went into gamestation to pick up StarCraft 2 as I'll be bed rideen for a while I ended up spending the £30 on 3 PS3 games instead (Arkam Asylum, Ratchet & Clank and Dead Rising 2) All games I've wanted to play for some time just never got around to it.

When I was chatting to the consultant there he pressed on me trading games in to get them even cheaper. Now consiering the damage it does to the games industry Im stuck somewhere within my moral compass staring at the empty abyss which is my wallet. While I take full advantage of stores pressing on pre-owned I don't expect it to last forever. While digital distribution may be the norm for mobile and smaller titles on PSN/XBLA, for larger titles I don't foresee an immediate future whereby we'll all be downloading them. Lack of broadband speeds, HDD space and most significantly a lack of competition. As EA opens its Origin store its an odd marketplace to be entering. Rarely do people complain that Steam is over priced, quite the opposite. So while I would argue any boxed product game on PSN is generally too expensive I do see a great deal of value in the smaller titles, such as the PixelJunk series. This is because I agree with their pricing, I don't agree that games should be a standard £39.99 regardless of content. I also don't buy into the idea that if its online only there will be a lack of competition its just there isn't any right now, if anything such as seen in the App store as competition increases among products prices will fall.

We're now seeing Origin compete with Steam and Amazons Android store will likely be among many competing with the native client. Regardless of anything if consumers don't feel something is worth the money, they won't buy it. Just give it time, during which I'll be fighting the Joker.