Game: Pre-owned "good for the industry"

UK specialist shop Game reckons the controversial pre-owned market is "good for the whole industry".

"It has made the mint marketplace more affordable and has kept people in that marketplace," boss Ian Shepherd told MCV.

"There has been endless debate over pre-owned versus mint, but my view is that a healthy pre-owned and trade-in marketplace - which we are largely the people who are involved in driving - is good for the whole industry."

Many game publishers and developers disagree.

EA, THQ, Warner and more recently Codemasters have all implemented an Online Pass system in recent years.

Online Pass comes with new copies of games, and allows online play and features. Without it, a fee is required.

Codemasters' superb racer DiRT 3 is the latest game to go down the Online Pass route.

Ed Boon told Eurogamer last month that Online Pass isn't just right for fighting game Mortal Kombat, it's right for all games.

"When we sell a game, we need to recuperate the cost of development," he said. "These games cost many, many millions of dollars to produce. If somebody is re-selling our game and cutting us out of the sharing of the profits of the game, to pay for our games we need to do something to protect our investment."

Only last week Fable III developer Lionhead told Eurogamer that second-hand (pre-owned) sales on Xbox 360 are today a bigger problem than piracy on PC.