Take-Two says “me too” when it comes to figuring out a way to earn money off of the massive used games market.
Rockstar and 2K Games owner Take-Two Interactive is the latest videogame company that says it’s going to try to siphon some profits out of the billion dollar used games market. CEO Ben Feder didn’t reveal his specific plans on how he’s going to do so, but did say that Take-Two plans to “participate” in used sales somehow.
Take-Two now joins a crowd populated by companies such as Sony, Activision, EA, and THQ that have either said they plan to find a used games revenue stream or that have already implemented one. With GameStop selling billions of dollars of used games a year now, we’re seeing other retailers like 7-Eleven, Walmart, Toys ‘R Us, and Best Buy adding their own trade-in programs, and publishers have taken notice.
Speaking at the G7 Think Equity conference, Feder acknowledged that used games were here to stay, but said that Take-Two won’t be hands-off forever. “Look, the used game market is protected by U.S. law under the First Sale Doctrine,” he said. “We do believe that developers should participate in some way in the product they create, but it’s a protected environment. I know there was some… not legislation, but additional news that came out over the last few days.. but I think it’s too early to tell what impact that will have.”
“We try to announce results and what the company’s actually doing. We don’t discuss what goes on internally. For sure, we think the used game market is large, it’s an interesting market and something we should participate in. Beyond that I don’t have much more to comment.”
Take-Two’s Red Dead Redemption was a massive hit for the company this year, and there’s no doubt that it’s also making GameStop a pretty penny, so it would seem somewhat imperative to me that more publishers start implementing ways to earn money off of used titles like this. Maybe we’ll see it in Activision’s upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops, but I’m actually surprised that it doesn’t seem more rushed, at least publicly, for publishers to get their used strategy in place.
Source: CVG
