Gamestop to start buying/selling retro games again

[technozombie]

I'm sure a lot of you have seen this on Facebook already but just in case:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/04/15/gamestop-to-offer-classic-consoles-and-games

Pretty interesting really.

[SignOfZeta]

What's interesting about it?

[Necromancer]

It's hard to get too excited.  You know they'll pay peanuts on trade in, and you have to buy games online; and if I have to go online and wait anyway, why not get a better deal from ebay/amazon/etc.?

On the plus side, Turbobs aren't accepted. 

[bob]

I'm glad gamestop is indirectly admitting that DLC is hurting them and they need to look into other revenue channels.

It's no surprise GS is announcing this now.  Q4 financials were horrendous and the stock took a dive in mid December (prime Christmas time).  It's been creeping back up lately back to Jan 2014 levels and I haven't seen the Q1 reports yet.  They are probably trying to get shareholders confident again, but retro gaming will be a logistical nightmare for them.  It's going to take many man hours and overhead to "test" and catalog the games if they actually get them in at good volume.  Half the games that come in will be in pretty bad shape and probably be covered with GameStop stickers from original purchases.  As necro said, they will offer pennies on the dollar for trade-in value and as we all know, we generally like to see what we are getting before purchase.  I see them putting up generic photos of each game on the website and you have to cross your fingers of what the condition would actually be.

[technozombie]

What's interesting about it?

For one thing I'm curious what a more static price structure would do to rising game prices. Obviously this would take awhile to come into effect, but if there is a large scale, big name source for certain   games then people may be more hesitant to pay rising eBay prices.

[cr8zykuban0]

if theyre doing this an online only thing, I doubt itll be good for them since what necro stated, just wait for better deals online.

it sucks for the people who would trade in their classics for chump change

[SignOfZeta]

GameStop was a crappy place to buy N64 game when they were new, it's a crappy place to buy them now. Just setting foot in that place fills me with so much hatred and anxiety with the stupid loud sales pitch coming out of every TV and demi-human in the place. I'd rather shop Red Frog. At least you couldn't see their stupid faces hassling you about preordering crap the whole time you were shopping.

Clarification: I never bought anything from Red Frog.

[Necromancer]

I bought quite a few PSP games from 'em; they were (perhaps still are) quite cheap.  The sales goons were often quite annoying, though; even after saying flat out that I only own a PSP, they'd ask if I wanted to pre-order the latest PS3/360 shit pile.

[bob]

yeah, the $8/hr morons that work there are one of the biggest problems with the whole company.

[lukester]

I like GameStop. Don't really get the hate for it, but I guess it does depend where you go.

Hopefully they at least bring back PS2 and GameBoy games. Don't really get why they got rid of them.

And maybe some N64 games would be cool too.

[KingDrool]

They need to update their stores in a major way. The ones by me still look like an old Babbage's from 1994.

[bob]

one of the worst sales practices I have ever seen in retail is conducted by gamestop.
"new" games being sold for full price and when it's the last one, you get the case off the shelf and the disc they pulled out of it.  LOL.

[jeffhlewis]

one of the worst sales practices I have ever seen in retail is conducted by gamestop.
"new" games being sold for full price and when it's the last one, you get the case off the shelf and the disc they pulled out of it.  LOL.

Yup...I just bought the "new" copy of Child of Eden that had been on the shelf for a bazillion years (cashier chick was like "Someone finally bought this, wow!"). They took the covered-in-stickers box I pulled off the shelf, slapped a disc in it and handed it over.

I didn't protest too much (because I removed the stickers anyway), and I get that most mainstream buyers wouldn't really care about this practice, but give me a break.

I fully expect game stores to go the way of record stores in the next 6-7 years. We'll have niche stores selling retro and whatnot, but very very few (if any) stores selling "new" product.

[TurboGrafx]

Bring back Funcoland!

[technozombie]

I've said this before but I worked for GameStop for 5 years and was a store manger for 3. I HATE GameStop. When I was a manager I would give people who bought the last one 10% off.