Retailers Report Xbox One Pre-Orders Coming in Fast and Furious
After months of waiting, Microsoft finally unveiled its next generation game console, the Xbox One, though not without a bit of controversy. Always-on DRM was a hot topic leading up to its launch, and after Microsoft squashed the rumors that you wouldn't be able to use the console if your Internet was out, the attention quickly turned to the used games market. Despite the uncertainty there, retailers are getting behind the Xbox One in anticipation of a busy holiday shopping season.
To quickly recap, Microsoft has come up with a way to allow the used games business to remain while at the same time giving publishers a cut of the sales. As it stands, games are installed to the Xbox One's hard drive and tied to a user's Xbox Live account. You can play the game at a friend's house, but only by using your Live account, or they can pony up a fee to activate the game on their machine (the fee is equal to the game's retail value).
As for selling used copies, when you bring in your old game to, say, GameStop, the title is deactivated from your Live account and up for grabs. When it gets resold, game publishers and Microsoft will both receive a portion of the sale. There have been some unconfirmed reports that the seller (in this example, GameStop) could end up with a mere 10 percent of the sale price, and if that's the case, it would effectively destroy the used games market.
So, there's some lingering uncertainty as to how all this will play out, but not so much that retailers are getting the heebie-jeebies. Quite the opposite, they're ordering more Xbox One consoles than PlayStation 4 devices.
"We have been inundated with pre-order and product information requests from consumers since the reveal last week," Grainger Games sales director Phil Moore told MCV. "We are confident that Microsoft have gamers backs and will produce a system that supports the video games market as a whole for many years to come."
Moore isn't the only one saying this. MCV provided plenty of other examples, including a claim that the Xbox One has become the fastest pre-ordered product in Blockbuster's 24-year history.
To quickly recap, Microsoft has come up with a way to allow the used games business to remain while at the same time giving publishers a cut of the sales. As it stands, games are installed to the Xbox One's hard drive and tied to a user's Xbox Live account. You can play the game at a friend's house, but only by using your Live account, or they can pony up a fee to activate the game on their machine (the fee is equal to the game's retail value).
As for selling used copies, when you bring in your old game to, say, GameStop, the title is deactivated from your Live account and up for grabs. When it gets resold, game publishers and Microsoft will both receive a portion of the sale. There have been some unconfirmed reports that the seller (in this example, GameStop) could end up with a mere 10 percent of the sale price, and if that's the case, it would effectively destroy the used games market.
So, there's some lingering uncertainty as to how all this will play out, but not so much that retailers are getting the heebie-jeebies. Quite the opposite, they're ordering more Xbox One consoles than PlayStation 4 devices.
"We have been inundated with pre-order and product information requests from consumers since the reveal last week," Grainger Games sales director Phil Moore told MCV. "We are confident that Microsoft have gamers backs and will produce a system that supports the video games market as a whole for many years to come."
Moore isn't the only one saying this. MCV provided plenty of other examples, including a claim that the Xbox One has become the fastest pre-ordered product in Blockbuster's 24-year history.
