A few noteworthy things.

I rarely shop at Gamestop. However, I rarely purchase or play videogames anymore. I have been playing the Mario Party series on Gamecube lately, but otherwise stick with the classic games that I know and enjoy. My older brother loves gaming in general, and he browses Gamestop whenever he gets the chance. His only complaint about the store is that sometimes the employees are a little too anxious to ask him if he needs any help or what not, when my brother just wants to be left alone to browse the shelves. Otherwise, he has no complaints. However, the difference is probably that my brother is a gamer, and not a collector. If there are a few stickers on the box, or the game is missing a manual, it is not preferable to him, but at the end of the day my brother wants to be able to sit down and play the game. I have a few other buddies which shop at Gamestop for XBox games from time to time...once again, they are gamers first and foremost. For the person who is merely a gamer and not a collector, I think that Gamestop works fine. As someone else also mentioned, around my area Gamestop, Wal Mart and Target are the only places where one can typically buy videogames. The closest Best Buy is easily an hour away, and not worth the drive, and if one really just wants to find the game and buy it and then play it, Gamestop seems to work okay, since they have a larger selection of games and so forth.

To those who claim that a "new" game without shrinkwrap but never played is technically not new: I disagree with this opinion. Let's say that I go to Barnes and Noble and purchase a book which is for sale. Chances are, that someone had leafed through the pages previously, and maybe they even sat down to read parts of the book before buying it!?!? However, I am pretty sure that most people consider the books being sold at Barnes and Noble as new, despite the fact that they may technically have been fingered through (and thus potentially briefly used). On the other hand, if the disc at Gamestop was removed from the case but NEVER used, I really do not see how that alone makes the game used. If one tries to sell it later on eBay for instance stating that it was never used, yet is missing the shrink, there may be a problem because there really is no evidence supporting the fact that the game is indeed new. But the act of having the game removed from the shrinkwrap does not make it used, if it never was used.

On a further note, I believe that Gamestop employees should not be able to take the new games home or play with the new games. That would make the games used, and then selling them as new in this case seems a bit deceitful. However, if this was not allowed to happen, and the games were opened but never used, then they should be sold as new, because after all...they were never used!