Used game store "rant" & ?s

[RJ]

I visited a few of my usual local game shops yesterday & wonder 1 thing- where will it all go? Shelf after shelf, row after row of overpriced used games no one wants. Obviously no one's buying this stuff- is it the economy? I was the only customer in each place, w/ employees half-heartedly watching over it all. It's depressing actually. I look for PS2 & Wii games & didnt see a single game I wanted, much less pay so much for. One place has the orig. PS2 Guitar Hero (game only) for $27 used- you can get GH 1 & 2 for $20 new at Target! Another place has PS2 NAMCO 50th Anniv. for $20- I paid that when it released yrs ago. & who wants 5 yr old sports games at $10 each?

I guess my real question- what will they eventually do w/ it all? I'm not some concerned environmentalist but where will it all go? Recycled, trashed, melt it down, burn it for heat...? Do these stores already dump much of their inventory? Seems like the same junk whenever I stop in.

[monkeychemist]

They will go out of business and sell their stuff at bulk price to gamestop...

[Daft Punk]

One place has the orig. PS2 Guitar Hero (game only) for $27 used- you can get GH 1 & 2 for $20 new at Target! Another place has PS2 NAMCO 50th Anniv. for $20- I paid that when it released yrs ago. & who wants 5 yr old sports games at $10 each?


It's the same here even if it's just a flea market vendor. I always give them the business about the high prices on stuff like that. They proceed to tell me blah blah but guitar hero is $60 at walmart and namco blah blah blah has like 10 games in one. Same with sports games most of them just give me the name of a random sports game and tell me it goes for $60 new.

[The 1 2 P]

I wonder the same thing about some ebay sellers. Although a few have enough common sense to lower their prices in order to move stuff, some keep the same over priced buy it now items listed for years. I was watching a copy of Syphon Filter 3(alternate cover) on ebay for over a year and he wouldn't come down on his $500 asking price. He recently just stopped listing it, meaning he's going to keep it. But imagine sellers that do that with 100-800 different games. Thats alot of extra junk to keep lying around just because you aren't smart enough to deduce that when you lower your prices it gives you a better chance at successfully selling your items.

[Sniderman]

<shrug> What's to wonder about? Were you filled with curiousity when the Playstation, Dreamcast, Saturn, and Sega CD were discontinued? What happened to all of THOSE overprised games at the time? And the Genesis, SNES, TurboGrafx games? Where did those end up? And the 2600, 5200, Colecovision, Intellivision, and NES carts that lined the mom and dpop shelves and upstarts like, say, Gamestop.

As they sang in Titantic, "My heart will carry on." Those overpriced games you're concerned about won't end up in a landfill. They'll end up where alllllll of the other games went. Into our collections for incredibly cheap.

[RJ]

@monkeychemist- Thats just it. One of the stores WAS GameStop.


I dont personally care WHERE the games go, I was just wondering. I dont think I'll be adding lots of those titles to my collection in the future, but then again, I've pretty much stopped & my tastes have changed & matured. Actually right now I'm (re)building my Atari VCS library.

Regarding the older systems Sniderman mentioned: I see the point, but 20+ yrs ago there weren't chains of used game stores w/ so much unwanted product sitting around. Yes, Funco(land) was around, but now we have GameStop/EB, GameCrazy, etc. not to mention numerous M&P stores as well as dept. & toy stores. If there WERE similar stores back then, I didnt see many of them, but I didnt get around much when I was 12 as now as I'm an adult. & one of the places I regularly visit has lots of overpriced NES, SNES, & Genesis games never moving.

I think another factor is, before companies started pooping out annual sports titles, there was really only 1 or 2 of each sport per system. & of course there weren't roster/lineup changes or gameplay updates to make the previous yr's version "obsolete".

Dont get me wrong- I like these stores & visit them frequently/when I can (I dont buy very often though). But walking in & seeing ALL those games, multiple copies of the same sports title(s), games priced what they were 1-2 yrs ago, whatever, I'm just amazed.

[Dangerboy]

what will they eventually do w/ it all?

Probably the same thing they did with all the 99 cent games no one wanted;

tossed them out.