Report: Bethesda, Wii Games Have Best Resale Value

 

A new survey of 2008 secondhand game resale trends reveals that Nintendo and Bethesda-published titles have the biggest resale value, whereas Sega, Brash, and the Sierra label resell for the least, on average.

Pricing data site Video Game Price Charts tracks “gray market” sales, or games and consoles re-sold through unofficial, largely North American channels such as Amazon, Half.com, eBay, and JJGames.

It shared the following chart listing the top game publishers by resale value (listed companies must have published six or more game SKUs in 2008):

A number of other statistics were revealed alongside the publisher list. In the individual chart, Bethesda’s PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of Fallout 3 (Survival Edition) were listed in VGPC’s top 10 games by resale value, helping explain the company’s appearance.

However, Wii titles such as Wii Fit, Mario Kart Wii, Rapala Fishing Frenzy, and the Rock Band 2 bundle lead the chart, with resale prices significantly above their MSRPs, from 16 percent to as high as 55 percent.

At the bottom of the “Publishers By Resale Value” tally are Capcom, Rockstar Games, Sega of America, Brash Entertainment, and Sierra, with resale values of their games dropping by an average of 43 to 59 percent.

Individual games with the worst resale value include Sega Superstars Tennis, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and The Club, dropping in price by 73 to 83 percent since their release.

Ranking consoles by their games’ average resale value, VGPC puts Wii, Nintendo DS, and PlayStation 3 at the top, with their titles dropping by about 25 to 30 percent in value over. PSP, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 make up the bottom half of the list, losing 31 to 37 percent of value on resold games. 

The full set of resale charts are now available on the Video Game Price Charts weblog.

- Bethesda Announces Fallout 3 Mod Tools, DLC

Bethesda plans next month to make available user content creation tools for its open-world RPG Fallout 3, with paid downloadable content for PC and Xbox 360 users coming in January.

The official editor is entitled G.E.C.K., or Garden of Eden Creation Kit. It will be offered free to PC players.

Even as recently as the month before Fallout 3’s release, the fate of its mod tools were in question, with marketing VP Pete Hines claiming that mods were “not on the schedule,” because “it takes a lot of time and effort.”

The new single-player DLC, on the other hand, has long been promised ahead of the game’s release, and is exclusive to the PC and Xbox 360 platforms; on PC, it will be distributed through Microsoft’s Games for Windows Live platform, which is integrated into the game.

The first DLC pack, “Operation: Anchorage,” will reproduce the liberation of Chinese-occupied Alaska, and will ship in January 2009. Another pack, the Pittsburgh-area “The Pit,” will ship in February, and a third, “Broken Steel,” will ship in March, continuing the main quest line by allowing players to join the armored Brotherhood of Steel.

Modding has been a significant part of Bethesda’s player community since 1996s The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, which players modified despite having no sanctioned tools with which to do so. For the third and fourth main entries in the series, Morrowind and Oblivion, Bethesda released official mod tools, each called The Elder Scrolls Construction Set.

No price points were given for the paid downloads.