Pre-owned games blamed for falling sales

The games industry is suffering at the hands of second hand sales, claim games analyst firm Cowen and Company, as reported by MCV.

The announcement comes as part of a study comparing the current hardware generation to the previous one. Cowen and Co. reckons that the userbase of the PS3 and Xbox 360 is now roughly equivalent to the size of the PS2 and Xbox audience in 2003.

However, current sales are about 20 percent below the rate the last generation of consoles had at that time.

Cowen and Co. also note that the sales of games in their second month of availability are also down, having fallen by 62 percent by 2001.

Games publishers and developers are often critical of the second hand games market, but an increasing number of stores and supermarkets are now getting invested in the area.

Some publishers have introduced new measures to try and encourage first hand sales over second hand, such as EA's Project Ten Dollar, which offers extra content to those who buy new copies of a game.

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