Is Gamestop Evil? The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

[Sarge]

They'll really take a busted one? Man. I should jump on that, I know I've got a few dead ones. Time to go diggin' through the closet!

[wclem]

They'll really take a busted one? Man. I should jump on that, I know I've got a few dead ones. Time to go diggin' through the closet!

The only real drawback is that it is limited to one a day. You can still make 150 bucks in trade credit by the end, actually 180 if you go today.

[Sarge]

Well, I don't have that many to trade. I think I've got three I could bring in. Gotta reassemble them to some degree, though. One I'm not even going to try, it got nailed with water damage and there's nothing they can do with it.

[CRTGAMER]

I mean plenty on this very forum speak of all the Wii games they get for under a dollar and complete. If they lack retail space it is due to all the extra space taken up with Ads not because they have too many games and lack of room. Gamestop did just fine not throwing away xbox, dc, gcn, and ps1 cases of which I picked up quite a few for a $1 each when they still carried them.

Another great ideal would be to pull ps2 product, store and bring outside the store during the summer weekends. You could sell more ps2 games in those 24 days than the average Gamestop does all year and the plus side is it will bring more customers into your store.

But anyways I guess it's to late for me to gripe about it anymore, but with the thought that Wii, 360, PS3 might be on the chopping block it just makes me so frustrated. Gamestop prices seem to keep a lot of other retailers prices down but once they start thrashing the cases the prices at other places start to go up for complete copies. Right now there is no place cheaper to get complete wii games, but once those cases start to go mark my word the prices overall will steadily rise even if still relatively cheap.

So true, the best prices tend to be at the local "no shipping charge" Gamestop, but the lack of CIB not worth the trouble. No other retailer would purposely strip a product out of a box to save shelf space and try to reduce sale it later on. An opened item yes, but not one still in the box!

I'm not keen on limiting older games to be sold only on a weekend outside the store sales event. I imagine there are sales loss on any day the games are not available. Game Crazy used to display a rack of games outside, ruined many a game case faded by the sun. Just have the games at the inside entrance and make them enticing with EACH individual game at a sales price (not buy two get one free crap) as well as common sense merchandising such as keeping the original case and without ten different old price stickers stuck on them.

Space will always be a concern.

In my eyes, it's a no-brainer to put Wii/360/PS3 games on the chopping block when I think about it in terms of a cost to benefit ratio. Gamestop is looking a profit margins which makes them sustainable in a volatile market. Fifty copies of Madden 2010 won't provide the profit that one copy of Madden '16 can. Out with the old.

Agree as far as retail, the older games have very little profit. The store needs to be smart how to sell the older product to make way for the new releases. Sell them cheap, but don't make them a harder sell by gutting them.

Of the Wii/360/PS3 only the WiiU is backwards compatible to its older games. Perhaps this might extend the CIB deadline for at least the Wii games on the Gamestop racks? I still not have seen a game series destroyed today as bad as the PS2. Although the DSI games are being killed to cart only, at least no other disc (except PSP) based games (so far) has a wide spread infection of case toss frenzy.

Even if gamestop didn't throw away their cases there would be at least 25% without a case already and take away generic cases even more, so space really isn't that much of a concern.

THIS. No idea why Gamestop was not smart about just keeping the original cases only and tossing out just generic cases. Considering the amount of poor quality control of incomplete tradeins, that alone would save a lot of space for each upcoming system facing the cut. At least put the stupid manual in the yellow envelopes before the case gets tossed you lazy bastards!

The crime they committed was throwing out thousands of cases and manuals and using those insipid stupid yellow slips. Lots of people will not buy a used game that way, far more than a cartridge and those displays show it.

That recent picture of the yellow sleeve PS2 games that I posted have been on the racks since 2013 or earlier since that is the last time Gamestop took PS2 games in! Proves that disc only does not sell, even at ten for a dollar each. Just so ironic that Gamestop will now take in PS2 consoles as ONLY a Tradein, I suspect we will not see those consoles on the market again.

Even the broken disc reader PS2 consoles would make a nice hard drive install machine!

[Tanooki]

Yeah I don't get it either, those images did look a little dated so I'm not surprised. When I used to hit the flea markets out west when I was living there some people tried to sell disc only games, they sat in the folders for the duration I did it (over 2 years) and those were like a buck a piece dumpers too. The only time they sold was when you had a game that was like normally $30-40+ like an Einhander I saw go in that way.

There's always an acceptable level even on discs when the price is big enough someone will take a loose game for a few bucks or less as a place holder or just a sacrifice to save but it's nothing like carts. I have a game like Captain Commando I'm putting up on ebay this evening and it sells easy for $90-100 as just a cart, it's not even that good, but it's harder to come by and it's protected in that shell, discs are just exposed.



I used to be driven nuts by this place and their tactics, but the fact is they're not going to go away, and no matter how much the informed bitch about it, they're in the vast minority as the rest either don't know or don't care enough to bother. I can't hate on them too much, they are pretty helpful in tracking down stuff in store and will hold it or have it shipped to your nearest location which is handy. I just don't care to buy used off them if it won't save me more than $5 or so so when I see an $18 used/$20 new game that's just a laugh.

[Sarge]

Well, the key to that is to take advantage of the "buy two, get one free" sales on used product. That happens often enough to make it worthwhile. It's also an extra 10% off if you're a PowerUp Rewards member, which I always am just for the magazine, I save enough to more than justify the cost.

You are right, though, often times it's just not worth snagging a used copy if the new one is there, there aren't any specials, and you want that game now.

[JoeAwesome]

Even the broken disc reader PS2 consoles would make a nice hard drive install machine!

Not so much for the slims, though. There are USB options for those, but it's not like those have as good of compatibility is the fats.

[Sarge]

Not to mention the USB on PS2 is slooooooowwwww. USB 1.1, unfortunately, and not even full speed USB 1.1.

This reminds me that I do need to dig around this evening and see if I can find one to get rid of. All my busted ones are Slims, actually. Or I could just keep 'em around for parts.

[wclem]

Not to mention the USB on PS2 is slooooooowwwww. USB 1.1, unfortunately, and not even full speed USB 1.1.

This reminds me that I do need to dig around this evening and see if I can find one to get rid of. All my busted ones are Slims, actually. Or I could just keep 'em around for parts.

They take slims also. I traded in one today missing two screws, another 30 bucks store credit!

[pepharytheworm]

Are they actually selling these ps2s? Or are they buying them back just to get you to buy more and end up trashing the ps2s? There are plenty times when I worked there where we would buy stuff back with no intention of selling, usually it's accessories or low priced games never consoles.