-bjork- wrote:

Game retail is one of the hardest markets to be in. It's an economics thing.

There is a difference between charging in the upwards of 500% more than what you purchase something for and selling something for a more reasonable amount. Buy a $7.99 game then turn around and say you want sell it back. They will offer you no more than $2. They just made 300% profit. Times that by 1000's of transactions. Game retail might be one of the best markets to be in. It's one of the few industries gaining profits in this recession.

docinsano wrote:

Gamestop sucks because they bought out FuncoLand which also sucked.

Technically Barnes and Noble bought them. I was there for the whole buyout. It was extremely shitty when they took away our stations to try games and removed the older stuff. It's all about floor space though. GameStop is already a tight quartered clustered fuck of a mess.

Once I finish college I plan on jumping back into the market, and lets just say that Gamestops profit margins are nausiating to say the least.

Prices are set by corporate headquarters. All the computers are linked to a database so price changes can be done as clean and quickly as possible. Every store should have the exact same price structure unless otherwise authorized by corporate. Such as a particular game being in higher demand in a certain locale.

Also in regards to Hacker's post. They shouldn't give you a price quote on a trade in for one simple reason - Idiots will hear a price then come in a week later and be like you quoted me $25 now your saying its only $5? It alleviates a lot of retarded customers reacting stupidly.

Hacker wrote:

Douche, it pissed me off when I lived clear across town. I didn't want to have to convince my parents to drive me to gamestop only to tell me that the game I wanted to sell was only worth $3.36 and then go to game crazy and find out they would have given me $20 They also suck because the sold me a corrupt copy of a game.

Blame it on Douchebags that try to make a scene or think they are being cheated. I'm not defending GameStop. I have a lot of horror stories from there. But I personally would have no problem telling people prices over the phone if I wasn't busy. It's horrible when people called asked for a price and then said oh and what about this, and this one, and this one...and so on. I would always tell them that the trade in prices are subject to change and to just use it as an estimate.

If you got a corrupt game you have a 30 day warranty. However make sure its the game and not your system. People didn't realize that the PS2 could "break" and only read Blue back or Silver back games.

New games and systems always have poor markup. Still they make atleast $5 per new game and about almost nothin on systems. When you factor in that all they do pretty much now is fill preorders there is hardl any lose and massive profit. A game sells 100,000 copies the first week? that $5,000,000+ just in profit, not to mention add ons like strat guides or game protection.

There is a reasonable trade in price for every price level of game. However GameStop is completely abusing the customers, most of which don't know any better. There have been times as a joke one of the employees has said to me, "Do you just want to give it to us, it's a Nickel?"

-bjork- wrote:

Douche McCallister wrote: New games and systems always have poor markup. Still they make atleast $5 per new game and about almost nothin on systems. When you factor in that all they do pretty much now is fill preorders there is hardl any lose and massive profit. A game sells 100,000 copies the first week? that $5,000,000+ just in profit, not to mention add ons like strat guides or game protection. There is a reasonable trade in price for every price level of game. However GameStop is completely abusing the customers, most of which don't know any better. There have been times as a joke one of the employees has said to me, "Do you just want to give it to us, it's a Nickel?" I would imagine the profit from first-week sales combined with the marked-down sales to people like me who wait for $29, make the whole thing a wash as far as new sales go. Can't say that for sure, but I'm pretty sure. And the solution to the trade-ins is to simply quit trading things in. But good luck getting a nationwide movement with that.

I made a typo regarding the profit it should've been $500,000 less impressive then previously stated. But in regards to mark downs: New games are rarely if ever marked down, their used game counterparts are though. When they are marked down it means they have an abundance of stock that isn't moving or the buzz surrounding it has faded. The only time it may appear to be a mark down is when the company recieves another shipment of games while they still have some of the previous shipment. If the new price for those games are cheaper they will mark the games down. That is pretty much the only incident that would cause a new game to get marked down. Plus with their pre-order strategy they have very little if any loss in this aspect.

If you buy back a $49.99 game and sell it for $44.99 you usually have a break even point of about $22.99 which means in order for them to be out on profits they would have to have the game traded in and stay on their shelf for a duration of several months if not longer for it to reach a price at which the trade in price exceeds the selling price. I'm not saying it doesn't happen but it's not a common occurence. And who here hasn't heard of stories about Gamestop selling a used copy for $7.99 and a new copy for $49.99 or even Used copies for more than new copies.

I've had a very indepth experience with them and have done a lot of research over the course of the past couple years. They are screwy to say the least.

-bjork- wrote:

This doesn't make sense to me. Outside of some GTA/Halo/Mario-level title, it seems like games tend to drop price in a hurry any more. Not like the week after they come out, but maybe 4-6 weeks after, as you said about the buzz dying down. So if it was $59, now it's $49. Then $39 later, and at some point you're selling new copies for less than the company paid for them, if you still have copies from the initial batch. I don't know GS' buying patterns, but unless they ordered replenishment months in advance and can't cancel, ordering more stock of an item that isn't selling, just seems foolish. All I know is the new-game market isn't their bread and butter, because in the old days game stores didn't carry used, but now it's a necessity. :shrug:

The new games reduce in price because the games sales figures have usually been hit. Kind of like "Greatest Hits". Once it hits a Game Developers target profitability and sales plateau they implement a slight price decrease periodicaly down to bargain status. Obviously the more people that buy your game the more money you make. Now GameStop will get notices well in advance of a price cut that will be implemented, that's when they start trying to sell out of it right along with the time that the price will drop. At which time they purchase another order at the reduced price. In some cases they don't and they have a left over game that is more expensive then its brethren.

And Used games isn't a neccessity, the stores realized on how big of a cash cow used game sales were and boom now we got fingerprinted and scratched games from little Bobby who doesn't know how to put a cd back in its case. :shakes fist: