Gaming dumpster diving? So those boat loads of NHL games just go to the dumpster? Oh man. Maybe even Monster Hunter games!
Taxes. (Ugh, this is going to take a while.) We, collectively, have set up the tax code to allow businesses to deduct a certain amount of losses from their tax burden. We do this to provide companies with a bit of a safety net thus encouraging a certain amount of risk taking which leads to innovation. In the video game market, this safety net means retailers like GameStop can take a risk buying indie titles like Ico. Otherwise, they would only risk buying the types of games which have the most demand which in today's market would mean a store filled with first person shooters. (Remember, a retailer's sole purpose of existence is to turn a profit, not necessarily to further artistic endeavors.) And if the big retailers aren't going to buy the title, the studios aren't going to spend that type of money to develop it. Without this kind of safety net, we don't have the Magnavox Odessey, nevermind Psychonauts or Journey. GameStop could donate the product, but the reason they don't usually do so is that they don't receive the full deduction that they would for destroying the product. This difference exists for the sake of market stability. If you donate an item, that item still physically exists and the NPO (non profit organization) can turn around and sell it to raise funds thus reintroducing the physical item into the market. So now you have the market flooded with titles that don't sell and the video game industry already saw in the early '80s what happens when a market is over-saturated with product. GameStop may be crappy for a whole bunch of reasons, (mostly for selling year old titles above fair market value in an attempt to minimize losses in their used software side of the business) but following tax codes isn't one of them.
Understandable, but that's a problem with the system then. I know we aren't allowed to go into political discussions so just keeping it brief and to the point; if you can't donate usable product to those in need simply because of it coming down to a difference in tax deductions, then there is a problem. And that really applies to anything across the board, not just video games.
No worries. There's no need to discuss specific economic policies to discuss economic theory. If we encourage corporations to donate usable product rather than destroying it, then we encourage flooding the market with unwanted goods. Let's say you make widgets. Your widgets cost you 40 cents per widget to manufacture and you sell them to Wal~Mart (because it allows me to use the little squiggle button on my keyboard [Yes, I know they don't use it officially anymore.]) for 50 cents/widget. Your competitor manufactures a crappier widget for 25 cents a widget and sells them to Wal~Mart for 30 cents/widget. Wal~Mart has a bunch of crappy widgets left over because no one wants them. So they donate the crappy widgets rather than destroying them. NPOs are going to take the crappy widgets for free because they don't have a large widget budget. Now you have a lot of crappy widgets on the market and you don't have a case where supply greatly outweighs demand. When supply > demand, market value drops. So even though you may make a superior widget, you're not selling as many widgets. So what happens is that to support the widget market, we make rules that say, you can only take a tax break on x number of widgets or x% of the widgets you donate. Conversely, if the NPOs aren't getting enough widgets, we might remove the restrictions on how many widgets you claim against your tax burden. In video games specifically, as much as it may pain us to see a sliced Blu-Ray case, there's not exactly a shortage of titles that can be donated to NPOs like children's hospitals and thus we haven't relaxed those restrictions. We use financial incentives (and sometimes subsidies) to manipulate the market and individual practices all the time. I'm not convinced that anything's "wrong with the system" as it's designed.
Thank you, but rest assured that no one is going to ask. You made a comment decrying a company from destroying old, unsold games and Cracka J and I discussed why they do that. Getting back to the thread topic, does anyone know of a decent generic 2600 controller on the market. It seems that anyone that sells two original joysticks wants more money than it would cost me to buy a system with two sticks and half a dozen games. I figure someone's making third party sticks that work satisfactorily.
Aren't those actually defective products? No company wants defective products fished out of their dumpsters and sold either back to them or other companies/consumers so Gamestop makes sure to destroy them. I can see some games and accessories that still work being trashed only because it's either impossible to sell without taking a loss or have been sitting on the shelf for years. Gamestop apparently released a video response to a dumpster diver who called them out, listing the charities they donate to. Any disc found undamaged may look/play fine for a while but it could be corrupted or end up being truly defective halfway through the game.
ok, so when TLOZ: Twilight Princess was released i got two copies, one on Wii the other on GCN. i love TP but the gcn version, i never opened it. still has the plastic wrapping. i would never sell it nor do i believe i'll ever open it but for shits and giggles, how much is it worth?
That could be too. In the vid I caught, the discs looked pretty clean aside from one deliberate cut on all the discs, but who knows. In the same vid it was also clear that all the accessories cords had been cut, so I find it a bit hard to believe it was all defective merch they had in store. Looked like it was simply spring cleaning at the store and they destroyed the product to prevent people from taking it.
Any defective games are supposed to be destroyed with a good deep cut into the information side. It could be just some lazy employee who was supposed to destroy the discs as per company policy but who knows. As for the electrical cords, maybe it's the same thing. They could have been defective and the last thing you want is defective electrical cords floating around out there. That's now a safety issue. If they're still in great working condition, I guess I don't have an answer for it except that the store has no room to sell cords (especially when they could sell a new console, but most stores want you to upgrade rather than repair), they're unable to donate them and they want to discourage dumpster diving. There's this neat little subculture of retro videos that cover dumpster diving and I've seen some awesome finds, and I'm stunned by the sheer amount of great stuff, but it might be getting to a level where the stores have to discourage it. I'm pretty sure I would as it becomes a safety issue for the employees if less than reputable characters are rummaging through their trash for something to hock, especially at night (not you, Shin-Gouki, you're cool; I'm talking about the stabby hobos). Keep it. The GCN version is more valuable. A sealed copy can go for anywhere $100+ easy as the prices are jumping. Plus you can use traditional controls and the map is actually mirrored from the Wii version (well, the GCN version is the proper map where the Wii version was mirrored to make Link right-handed for the motion controls). I remember buying my Wii on launch day along with a copy of TP, taking it home, hooking everything up and remember loving the game but being slightly disappointed at the odd control scheme. Then I was able to track down the GCN version and loved it even more using the controller.
That GameCube acronym irks me every time I see it. The worst is everyone uses it. Kinda like the word third party in the transformers world. It makes sense to the fandom but doesn't really hold anything beyond that. I think I also just need a smoke.
GCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCN GCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCN GCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCN GCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCNGCN You're welcome.
A sealed TP is an awesome thing to have. Just don't become a scummy reseller and put it up for auction at three times the asking price. Yeah, I guess they threw the N in at the end for Nintendo as we all feel more comfortable with a three/four letter acronym. If anything it should be NGC or GMCB, but personally anything other than GCN looks a little funny now after so many years. So, I got my last Famicom "Pulse Line" cart in the mail today. Got the whole collection now. Pretty, like a rainbow.
i would never sell it. but my descendants can do what they want with it. or put my brain in a robot body and live forever.
Thanks guys, I'll check the number again when I get home, I just assumed it represented the percentage complete. I may actually have completed the whole thing then.
You may also be missing some of the gates in the star world. Each of the five regular gates returns you back to the previous star (whereas the keyhole takes you to the next star).
i've never played SH1 in hard mode. i'm planning to end that this weekend. tell me if i'm right on what to expect, less ammo, enemies do more damage and enemies are tougher to kill. best to run than fight, right?
