GameStop: 60% of customers won’t buy console that doesn’t play used games

Last week, a GameStop spokesman alluded to internal research that the company said showed consumers were significantly less likely to buy a console that wasn’t able to play second-hand games, but it wouldn’t reveal the specific results of that survey. Now, a GameStop executive has said publicly that three out of five customers it surveyed said they wouldn’t buy such a system.

“I think it was 60 percent of customers who said they wouldn’t buy a new console [if it blocks used games],” GameStop CFO Rob Lloyd told the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference (as reported by VG247). “Consumers want the ability to play preowned games, they want portability in their games; they want to play physical games. And to not have those things would be a substantial reason for them not to purchase a new console.”

It’s not clear how the survey was conducted, but the results likely come from a self-selected group of customers filling out an online questionnaire for the chance at a cash prize. Furthermore, simply saying you’re against buying a used-game-free system is different from actually refusing to buy a system that has that killer exclusive title you want. And GameStop obviously has an interest protecting the significant profits it makes from used game sales by casting the used game market in the most positive light possible.

All that said, potentially alienating more than half of the console-buying audience in an effort to stifle the game resale market seems like a risky move. Yes, blocking used sales (as Microsoft and Sony have both been rumored to be considering for their next consoles) means publishers and console makers would make money directly from every game sale, but if those sales are coming from a base of customers that is half the size it could have been, that might be a Pyrrhic victory.

Lloyd also pointed out that only four percent of GameStop’s used game sales are for games that were released in the last 60 days, implying that used games are primarily providing an extended market for older and out-of-print games rather than sapping the market for newly released ones.