14 DAY TRIAL // Brian Farrell, who is the Chief Executive Officer of THQ, has said that the move to charge those who buy games second hand for the online play modes has show the publisher how much money it is loosing because of the secondary market over which they have no real control.
In a talk with MCV Farrell stated, “What we saw when we did the online charge for the second purchaser of UFC was we found a pretty good attach rate - it confirmed our suspicion that there are a lot of people participating in used games.”
He added, “It is one of those things of how much money could you have made if it wasn't for piracy or used games? It's a tough question because you don't know.”
Farrell also says that the publisher is now engaged with the biggest retailers in both the United States and in the United Kingdom in talks about how the used games market can be changed so that publisher and developer get a revenue stream out of it.
GameStop has repeatedly claimed that its business model is not influenced by the Online Pass initiative from Electronic Arts or by similar moves from other publishers and that it will actually benefit from selling access codes and downloadable content packages in stores.
UFC Undisputed 2010 sold less copies than the previous games in the series and some have attributed this decrease in performance to the introduction of an online pass like initiative for used games.
Electronic Arts, the company which now puts an Online Pass in all its sports titles, says that initial data from the initiative is encouraging, showing that most gamers hang on to their copies of the game and that those who pick them up used are prepared to spend money in order to be able to go online and play against their friends.