I was in the gaming industry for nearly 18 years, I’ve seen all sorts come and go. I’ve been around the second-hand side of the business for as long, and seen retro gaming grow. I’ve seen the pros and cons of both new and used items, also comparing the quality, range and price. There isn’t much I don’t know about it lol.
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The question?
The Questions these days are all about price and the future of gaming, for many years on the most part, it was cheaper buying things second hand, even with online sites and supermarkets aggressive pricing strategies, it was still slightly cheaper.
Though the gap reduced significantly, if you were looking to bulk out your range of retro, or gaming library it would be cheaper. Most games come out at a new full price, then shortly afterwards it would be in a sale, then over the year, it would slowly decrease, as did the second-hand price.
Gaming is changing
However the future is changing this, disc format is slowly fading out as we go far more digital, this generation alone has seen significantly less disk released games, the ps3 and 360 saw less than the ps2. So being able to buy things secondhand could be a dying art. Of course, there’s still a need of hardware to play the games on, consoles are still there and still arguably cheaper second hand, as are phones and tablets, another source to play games now. Pc is a different world, I won’t go into details with this, as it’s far more complicated and word be a lengthy post.
Another potential change is streaming, personally, this is where gaming will go, the servers etc… Will do the hard work, you will then use whatever device you have and play the games. Much like streaming films, so this will be another blow to second-hand.
With all this doom and gloom and negativity there is some light, if you don’t want to buy the latest hardware and the latest games there is retro, generally known as anything older than the last 2 generations that are often in shops to buy new/second hand. We have seen a resurgence in Retro! It’s become a collectable and “in thing” to do, both for geeks and trenders.
Retro gaming and collectables
Some of this is expensive, it’s collectable, you can make money on it, but also people know what the rare and best games are worth, thus if you are after this unique game you loved, then it might cost you more than you think. But in general, you can still spend an acceptable amount and get a console and some of the greatest games ever for your collection. You still would have great fun with it, just because it’s not the latest game on the latest console doest mean it’s not as good, I’ve tried to educate my children this as they had fallen into that trap.
So the future looks unsure if you’re looking for cheap gaming second had perhaps is still the way, If you have a phone or tablet then you might be gaming on them much more now and the second hand isn’t an option.
Personally many of the games through the last few years are still good enough to play and worth getting kids into them. Shop around, don’t always go for the new option, or the first place you see, try new try second hand, try to use a trustworthy place, if you use eBay or Facebook marketplace then it might be a risk. If you have an option with a warranty from a shop type source then that might be more reliable, yes maybe not as cheap as off some person on eBay, but that’s always a risk.
