Kyle Orland’s Workblog

Used Video Games Keep Some Retailers Afloat
by Kyle Kennedy

Kyle Orland, a Maryland-based freelance gaming journalist, said the secondhand games industry may become even more crowded while publishers find ways to supplement the existing model with their own. He pointed to services like Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade and the Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console, which already offer discounted classic games via direct download.

But Orland also suggests that the new and used sides of the industry may be necessary to ensure each other’s success.

"I know a lot of people complain that it’s significantly eating into new game sales. You hear it most from publishers, and sometimes you hear it from developers that their game would have sold better but people waited to buy it used," said Orland, co-author of "The Videogame Style Guide and Reference Manual." "But the fact that you can buy a new game, beat it, and sell it back for $20, I think that adds value to the new game sales, and it’s not taken into account more often."

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Media Coverage looks at a recent issue of the country’s longest continuously-running Nintendo advertisement.

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It’s a point that comes up a lot in arguments about the cultural import of video games. "The medium is still young," defenders argue. "Games may not have reached total mainstream acceptance yet, but just give it some more time. You’ll see."

We hate to break it to you guys, but video games aren’t that young anymore. This month marks 40 years since Ralph Baer’s Brown Box effectively created the idea of interactive screen-based games (and the industry is even older if you count Willy Higinbotham’s 1958 experiment Tennis for Two).

This important milestone got us wondering: how do the first 40 years of gaming compare to the first 40 years of other forms of mass entertainment? Continue reading for a quick historical comparison:

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Media Coverage takes a look at a quintet of stories that show tough times ahead for the game magazine market.

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(Download MP3)

The whole point of backward compatibility for most PS3 owners is being able to get rid of that PS2 in the old entertainment center. Yet many PS3 owners have had to keep their PS2 units hooked up for a few reasons, namely:

1. Support for our old memory card saves.
2. Support for rumbling controllers.
3. Support for the Guitar Hero controller.

Media Coverage looks at the surprisingly common phenomenon of journalists going to work for the game industry.

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Media Coverage looks at the "nichest" of the niche American game magazines – the proudly independent Play.

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