Do digital game libraries add value to a current gen console?

[marvelvscapcom2]

Hello everyone! .     Today on facebook marketplace I stumbled onto an interesting debate many people were having with this seller.  He was selling an Xbox One (standard version with dust)  for 700 USD lol.  Not so bad though because he said it came with 300 games. 300!!!  Holy cow.  I was estatic to see if I could negotiate and aquire such a set .  But than came to find the wool had been pulled over my eyes by yet another digital library guy.

I sat anxiously waiting for the pictures of the big beautiful green plastic stacks of current gen goodness but ending up getting cell phone shots of a TV screen with all those free games Xbox gives every month that he decided to download for 4 years and now he's trying to act like his Xbox comes with 300 "games".   All completely digital games.  Not an ounce of hard copy  .     And part of my soul shattered 


I actually decided to argue with him a bit.  I told him the digital games are not physical copies and that the Xbox's value isn't effected by digital media. He said he had spent over 3,000 dollars on the digital games. After a while of conversating with him  he did the common "don't like it, don't buy it"  so I left him alone and went on my way. 


But it does bring up an interesting debate that sparked a huge 200+ comment argument on the marketplace.   I started to think about it more and more and i'm starting to think maybe I was short sighted and the past of how gaming was corrupted how I thought of the here and now. I think maybe I was wrong.  With games going in the direction of digital only so rapidly.  Is someone selling their digital copies as an added bonus to their hardware really that far fetch'd?   I wasn't the only one to give him a hard time about the digital games.  So many people said they added no value.  But how didn't they?  Aren't they still games?  .

What are your thoughts on selling digital games with your console in the future.  Do they add value to your units for having them on the HDD?  .

If so how much value do they add.  How can we gauge it?   


For example say you had a switch.  With all the best games, 20+ amazing 1st party titles from Mario to Splatoon to Zelda and arms.  All digital.  But than you decided to sell the console.   Would you post it for 250 or 2,500?   All those amazing games are still on the SD.  They still came out of your wallet and the buyer will still get to play them.  Where do you stand on this debate? 

[turf]

Best that I know, Xbox games are tied to your account.  If you delete the account off of your Xbox, poof, games are gone. 

You don't really own digital games.  There's no resale value if you ask me... which you did by starting a topic.

[sworddude]

it will add value but not much just a mere fraction of what one would have spend on buying them games online in most cases even quite recently when the games are still expensive in wich case it will add more value if you picked the mainstream games that apply to many.

with your switch example you could get a couple hundred extra if you have the right buyer but only because it is fairly new. I'd say when something is new and you've got the good games that everyone wants 30 - 50% of the physical copy value. If you have crappy games it might add no value at all and ofcourse when things are not new anymore it will most likely barely add any value.

[ignition365]

Soooooooo, I thought this was a topic about "Is the PS4 a good console because it has a large digital library" and I'm like "Duh, of course that affects the console's feasibility as a long term investment"... but that's not what you asked.

So... I'm gonna break this down... at least for myself.

Wii/Wii U, all downloads are tied to the system itself and not the user.  So if you tried to sell me a Wii U and wanted over the going rate because it has Fatal Frame V, Smash Bros., and tons of VC and eshop games on the system, I might consider it, because that owner isn't going to be able to revoke those licenses.  I bought a Wii from a lady for $5 and she left her netflix info on it.  She can't do anything about that... it's how Netflix for Wii was designed... so she can't stop me from logging onto her account.  I have my own Netflix account, and who uses a Wii for netflix... so it's not an issue.

360...  Technically there are two licenses.  One for the system and one for the owner's account.  So in theory this could work, and the content could never be revoked if I never put the system on the network.  But who does that?  The seller could easily go to Xbox.com and do a content license transfer and I'd never see that content ever again.  Close, but nope.

PS3...  Licenses are granted to the activated systems.  I'm not entirely certain that the seller would be able to deactivate that system after selling it to you.  So that content is good on the system for any user on that system.  2 systems can be activated per account.  So you and the seller could SHARE the content if they never tried to de-activate your system.  Pretty sure you can deactivate the system remotely.  So the seller could bone you.

X1... The content is granted to the user and the "home" console.  All the user has to do is log onto another X1 system and set it as the "home" console and all your content is gone.  REALLY easy process.  Definitely easy for the seller to screw you.

PS4... Content is licensed to the activated PS4 and the user.  User can use the content on any system, Any user can use the content on THAT system.  Similar to 360.  You can deactivate once every 6 months I believe.  So the seller could bone you.

In most of these cases, if you are never going to go online, it's not a problem.

[burningdoom]

Even in the case of the Wii, if you ever deleted said software or it got corrupted, you wouldn't be able to get it back with a different account. So that's a very hard question to answer.

With PlayStation and XBox, no, it doesn't. Because it's tied to your account.

[rayne315]

Ignition really hit the nail right on the head. it doesn't matter how many games are on the system if the original owner decides to be a dick. you could have 10,000 games downloaded onto a system and so long as the original owner still maintains any sort of link whatsoever to the account that purchased them then you can be completely fucked when it comes to buying it.

instantly I can think of 1 very real example. on ps3 you can remotely remove access to an account from a different system so someone could download say 200 games at a value of $1000 sell you the system with that account, give you the password, let you change the password to whatever you want, then after 1 month (whatever the term for filing a claim on e-bay/amazon/etc is) put in their forgotten password security info and change the password on you/revoke that ps3's account privledges making you loose every one of those games. at that point you cant even do anything about it.

so for me there is absolutely zero value in digital collections from a buying/selling standpoint.

[emporerdragon]

There's also the fact that practically every company considers the selling of accounts to be against the ToS and a bannable offense, so the mere action of trying to sell the account runs the risk of making everything go poof.

Really, the only digital libraries that have any retained value are the ones where users can freely trade the items on the account, such as inventories for games like PUBG, CS:GO, or TF2.

[marvelvscapcom2]

One thing I just wanted to add that was a key part of it as some of mentioned here was the guy was also selling his account information and was willing to allow anyone to change it with him because others had mentioned how the account is linked to the games.  He was basically allowing the buyer to change password and email and take over the account.  .   He seemed pretty legit about it and wasn't too scammy.  Not sure if he could still pull a fast one though.

[wartoy]

you never truly own digital games! i downloaded doom on my 360 after a year or so i tried to play once and noticed the digital game i bought was deleted. their was a licensing problem with the company who owned the rights to doom so it was deleted. no one cares that you already paid for it.

[98dgreen]

It would be something more attractive to pick up but it would not raise the price any

[rayne315]

One thing I just wanted to add that was a key part of it as some of mentioned here was the guy was also selling his account information and was willing to allow anyone to change it with him because others had mentioned how the account is linked to the games.  He was basically allowing the buyer to change password and email and take over the account.  .   He seemed pretty legit about it and wasn't too scammy.  Not sure if he could still pull a fast one though.

im not necessarily saying the guy has bad intentions selling it im just saying that it is possible to scam people using this method. with all things there is a certain amount of trust required, even more when buying things for large amounts of money. not everyone is out to scam you but when you let your guard down you open yourself up to the possibility. I honestly do not recall how the XBone account setup went but IF EVERY SINGLE SETTING linking the previous owner to the account isn't changed it is 100% possible to get scammed. passwords can actually get reset MULTIPLE ways.

1. knowing the password (if you do not change it)
2. Owning access to the E-mail account linked to it. (typical password recovery)
3. Owning the phone number associated with the account. (getting text a temp password)
4. Knowing any/all of the security questions. (another typical password recovery option)
5. Having access to a master account. (would require it to be set up before hand, sort of the thing you would do with your kids accounts)
6. Owning an accepted photo I.D.. I shit you not I have called a company before because I did not know any of the account information for something I set up a long while back other than the user name. I got them to send me a temp password after I sent them a pic of myself holding my photo I.D., which had my full name and birth date, with a sticky note that said my user name.

Im sure I have even overlooked a readily available way to get it reset.

[hoshichiri]

One thing I just wanted to add that was a key part of it as some of mentioned here was the guy was also selling his account information and was willing to allow anyone to change it with him because others had mentioned how the account is linked to the games.  He was basically allowing the buyer to change password and email and take over the account.  .   He seemed pretty legit about it and wasn't too scammy.  Not sure if he could still pull a fast one though.

Of course he can- as noted above, he can use 'forgot account info' links to reestablish control. In theory, he could even tell Xbox he was hacked & get control back that way.

There is also the matter of:

1) If the buyer previously owned an Xbox One or 360, they may already have an established account and not want to use a second one for game access.
2) By taking on the account, you also take on liability for the previous owner's actions. You may just find yourself locked out of online play on one or more games becuase the guy broke TOS. Have fun trying to fix that one!
3) On the same note, you also assume the guy acquired the games legally. Find out later the games were hacked/cracked/bought on a stolen card? Too bad!

Basically, digital takes a huge amount of control away from the buyer- enough so to make attempting to buy 'used' digital content terribly risky. I sure as hell wouldn't pay a premium for digital content (although quite frankly, I won't buy a system used that's still available retail.)

[emporerdragon]

you never truly own digital games! i downloaded doom on my 360 after a year or so i tried to play once and noticed the digital game i bought was deleted. their was a licensing problem with the company who owned the rights to doom so it was deleted. no one cares that you already paid for it.

That doesn't sound right. I've got plenty of games that've been delisted, but my account can still download them via the account's history.

[wolff242]

He was selling an Xbox One (standard version with dust)  for 700 USD lol.  Not so bad though because he said it came with 300 games. 300!!!  Holy cow.  I was estatic to see if I could negotiate and aquire such a set .  But than came to find the wool had been pulled over my eyes by yet another digital library guy.

Wait...you thought this was a Xbox One with 300 Physical games for $700....and we were ready to negotiate? I thought gamestop was cheap.

[bikingjahuty]

I've seen people try and sell PS3 or Wii consoles for $600 on the justification that they were loaded with digital purchases. While I do think this does add some value to a console, it certainly does not equate to Mario Kart 64 digital = Mario Kart 64 physical price. In fact I'd argue that it might be worth 10% of what it's go for physically when calculating the value of digital items of a system. Technically digital games are worthless on the second hand market since no ownership has ever been transferred from the publisher to the buyer of the digital game in the first place.