Dave Long said:
This is pure bullshit. Since the very beginning of the trade-in program at Electronics Boutique, the one the current Gamestop system is patterned after, they sold the games for $5 off the new price. IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN LIKE THIS.
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No, it hasn't. When there was competition between the entities there was a much greater spread in the middle, and trade-in values were certainly better on a wider range of titles.
charlequin said:
Gamestop is like one of those shrimps that crawls into a fish's mouth, bites off its tongue, and replaces it with itself: you might be able to argue that the fish (game publishers) would be better off without the shrimp altogether, but now it's too late; they've formed a parasitic-symiotic relationship, and getting rid of the shrimp (Gamestop) now would just leave the fish without a tongue.
(Of course, the difference is that in this case, the publishers had been waving their tongue around all over the place for a while; they were just waiting for someone to bite it off and replace it.)
While I somewhat agree with this, I'd point at PC-centric publishers, who have almost zero presence at Gamestop and no used presence whatsoever, as a counterpoint to it being too late to change. Unsurprisingly, PC games also tend to have a much more frequent and gradual price reduction basis than console games, thereby hitting every customer type at some point.
leondexter said:
That's easily disproved by the simple fact that Gamestop carries new copies of games months after their launch. Of course they prefer to sell used, but they wouldn't be moving the volume of new games that they do if they were selling the bare minimum possible.
Extra copies really only proves that Gamestop over-ordered a title and can't ship it back to the distro/pub. That said, since Gamestop wants to be perceived as "THE videogame store", then they're basically forced by marketing to carry titles that they may not have a used copy of. You're also mixing arguments by including volume, since Wal-mart moves a similar amount of volume without any trade-in necessary. Locations alone would ensure that the volume moved remained high.
You sound like a disgruntled publisher with your views. One of them once said "Gamestop would ideally like to sell only 1 new copy of our game, and then sell it again and again." That's nonsense. Gamestop wants to sell millions of new copies as fast as possible, and then sell used copies after that, of course. I don't see how you can blame them for wanting the subsequent sales, which is what allows them to stay in business, after all, especially after they've sold the lion's share of the new product.
No, what Gamestop wants is to sell as many new copies as necessary to ensure the maximum amount of used copies during the time frame when they can maximize profits from sales of used games. As charlequin said, it's parasitic and symbiotic. They don't want to sell one copy, but they also don't want to meet demand with new copies.
Your hypothetical "other method" of getting used titles would be counter-productive, because they count on the used copies coming in also generating additional sales as the people trading in also make purchases. You continue to misunderstand, or just dismiss, the structure of this system, no matter how many times it's pointed out to you.
No, you just grossly overstate it. What they really want customers to do is trade-in titles for credit and buy used titles with that credit, thereby maximizing their profit. Retail typically makes very little money on sales of "day-1" copies.
Firstly, that's hardly a counter-argument to their success when all those businesses were using the same trade-in model, and secondly, there was just as much expansion going on as acquisition, if not more. Here in Las Vegas, for example, I believe they acquired 5 or 6 locations and opened 16 new ones. I expect that's more skewed to new stores than in the Eastern US, though, where those other chains were more prevalent.
I really wouldn't use Las Vegas as an example of smart growth or good business policy. That said, once a retail store reaches a certain size it becomes very difficult to dislodge them from market dominance, and through mergers Gamestop managed to reach what could basically be considered Sales Endgame, since they're already established anywhere and everywhere a possible competitor could emerge.
