Game Trade-in Madness

Mark Hamill

So I had Dead Rising & Perfect Dark on the 360 and Street Fighter Alpha 3 on the PSP and I wanted to get rid of them and get Bioshock for the 360 so I went into town to see what I could get.
I knew that Perfect Dark and Street Fighter would get me sweet bugger all, but I was hoping that Dead Rising would help make up the difference as its not that old and a really good game, so I went into Gamespot to see what they'd offer me. I was offered €23 for the lot!
Normally I'd ask for a break down to see what each game was worth, in case one game would be better off traded in somewhere else, but instead I just took my games back and left the shop immediately. I thought it was crazy, they had Dead Rising on the shelves second hand for €45 so I don't where €23 was coming from.
I very nearly went to Game next but thankfully remembered Smiths was around the corner so went there instead. (I hate trading in Game because one time I went in there with the Special Edition of Primal for the PS2 2 weeks after it had been released, and because they couldn't find it on their system they offered me €1! and this was with second hand versions of the game on their shelves going for €50!)
In Smiths they have an offer on some games that if you trade in 2 360 games you get it for €9.99, so I traded in Dead Rising and Perfect Dark against Bioshock and then got €10 for Street Fighter which paid for the difference.
Moral of the story: try everywhere when trading in games, you might double how much you can get!
(Hell, once because I was getting such bad offers for games I went into Chapters and traded them against books! ended up with about €15 more than if I traded against games)

Attol

Eh... Dead Rising is €26.99 second hand in Gamestop

Speedway

eh buddy I worked in a GameStop for 6 years. we had sooo many copies of perfect dark and dead rising.

literally about a hundred copies of each, we had so many second hand that we had to stock excess ones in the back cause they would never sell.

so do you really think that you're going to get a lot for games that nearly 80% of 360 owners already have and have already traded? It wouldnt make sense for gamestop to trade in those games and give you like €20 each for them.

Speedway

Attol wrote:

Eh... Dead Rising is €26.99 second hand in Gamestop

and yes thats right, it is €26.99, must have been an incorrect sticker. again so many copies were in stock second hand gamestop actually used to offer it as a free game at xmas with the 360

Mark Hamill

Speedway wrote: »

so do you really think that you're going to get a lot for games that nearly 80% of 360 owners already have and have already traded? It wouldnt make sense for gamestop to trade in those games and give you like €20 each for them.

Strange then, that Smiths managed to give me twice what Gamestop offered me then...

ntlbell

Mark Hamill wrote: »

Strange then, that Smiths managed to give me twice what Gamestop offered me then...

maybe that particular smyths only had 99 copies

Varkov

Still got that special edition Primal?:eek:

Doodee

Speedway wrote: »

eh buddy I worked in a GameStop for 6 years. we had sooo many copies of perfect dark and dead rising.

literally about a hundred copies of each, we had so many second hand that we had to stock excess ones in the back cause they would never sell.

so do you really think that you're going to get a lot for games that nearly 80% of 360 owners already have and have already traded? It wouldnt make sense for gamestop to trade in those games and give you like €20 each for them.

not to mention the mark up that is made by Gamestop on those games.

What were their revenue figures like again?

Speedway

Doodee wrote: »

not to mention the mark up that is made by Gamestop on those games.

What were their revenue figures like again?

not as high as you think because companies actually make a loss on the sale of consoles to customers, especially when sold as bundle deals. And they make very very little on new game sales.

Trade in prices aren't that great in most stores unless sometimes when trade in offers are run. But nobody is forcing anyone to trade anything in and if perfect dark for example is never going to be played again it is worth €0 to the owner so even if they get €10 for it its better than gathering dust considering that the original cost of the purchase is a sunk cost.

Doodee

what would be your rough estimate on the profit margin for a trade in?

Speedway

it depends on the game, I know gamestop USUALLY gave just over half of what the second hand price was. For older games this wasnt the case though as with the perfect dark which is old and they have hundreds of.

e.g game is new for €60, second hand = €45, trade in of €20 - €25

that's just a ROUGH estimate

d22ontour

The money gained by trading in games isn't worth the effort , you would probably gain more from adverts.ie etc.

Mark Hamill

Varkov wrote: »

Still got that special edition Primal?:eek:

Afraid not, I found somewhere that gave me a realistic price for a trade in (Xtragame I think, when it was young and giving good money for trade ins)

sprinkles

http://www.xtravision.ie/xvContent.asp?id=28

just a list of games xtra vision has on it's website. They seem to make a healthy profit from them