New Purchase Incentives
CONCEPT
New Purchase Incentives is a business strategy established by publishers to encourage consumers to buy games new. It is also primarily used as a means of profiting from used game sales where they otherwise could not.

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Overview

Some retailers have utilized the practice of purchasing used or second-hand games from consumers at cheap prices and sell them back to other consumers at slightly lower prices than the price of a totally new game. This allows the retailer to keep all the money and doesn't obligate them to give any of that money to the publisher or developer. To combat this, companies like EA, THQ (Company) and Microsoft have begun to put forth some incentives in their high profile games so that the customer will either purchase the game new or buy a used game, but get the game without the content, like DLC or an Online Pass, that came with the new game so extra money would have to be paid for that content. For instance, EA offers an Online Pass in all of its major sports games which can either be obtained by using a code gained through a new copy of the game or by buying one from EA for $10. New Purchase Incentives only really come in one form. They come in the form of one-time use codes, that the first owner can use only once, and the second owner, if the first owner decides to trade it in, couldn't use it. The code can either provide an essential part of the game, such as an Online Mode in EA Sports' Games or extra bonus content like the Cerberus Network Card in Mass Effect 2 (Game). 2013 signaled somewhat of a decline to NPI. In May of that year EA suddenly announced a stop to their strategy of including online passes with their games Sony also announced similarly that they'll also stop using such passes claiming that with Playstation Plus now being required for online play it would be redundant to make players pay for online twice. Note that this only applies to console games, because PC/Mac games cannot be bought second-hand as they all have CD-keys which prevent multiple people from owning the same copy and therefore, there are no new purchase incentives for them.

List of Current New Purchase Incentives

Concept details
Name
New Purchase Incentives
Aliases
Project Ten Dollar,Online Pass
Games
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