I'm not sure what things are like in the U.S. I do know what things are like here in Canada. While I was working at EB Games 10 years ago, I witness the price of used games rise 15 dollars to 5 dollars less than new. Hardware is sold at cost. New games have a 4 dollar margin. Used games have 100% + markup on what they give from the trade in (Normally 10 dollars for the trade, 50 dollar increase to sale). EB games make all their money from used sales and game guarantees. Game guarantees appeared to have disappeared. EB Games is also run by scum and don't know anything about games. The company would be able to save so much money if they just knew what to order. Though with that said, the game industry itself is becoming a sloth. Very few new games; mostly living off of DLC from said games. It was bound to hurt retailers sooner or later. Also hardware is going to suffer soon if retailers leave as others have mentioned. If we go 100% digital, hardware needs to be sold at a profit. Vita memory cards were most likely priced the way they were, because the Vita's were sold at cost and Sony was pushing a digital only ecosystem (Yes there was still physical), to appease the stores.
