Battle over used games

[sethnintendo]

Published: Thursday, April 23, 2009
Tech Stop: Site-Seeing
New battle over used video games

My mail carrier recently brought me nearly new copies of Gears of War 2 and the latest Call of Duty, a couple of video game blockbusters released this past holiday season.

These two hit titles would've cost me $120 retail, but through a used-game trading service called Goozex, I forked over only about 10 bucks worth of postage and fees as I mailed away a few old game titles from my personal collection to some other Goozex members who had requested them, just as I'd requested those two action games via the service. Not a bad deal.

Video game makers argue that their entertainment form gives its customers more bang per buck than any other medium. I squeezed about 100 hours of entertainment out of the recent hit Fallout 3, for example, and still didn't manage to complete every storyline packed on the game's disc. But at $60 a pop for a new title, this doesn't always feel like an inexpensive pastime. What's more, some of this medium's biggest fans are young and don't have deep pockets.

So it's perhaps not surprising that the used-video-game market has become a big business unto itself. GameStop, the dominant player in this market, recorded $2 billion in used-game sales last year. That's compared with a total new-game software market in the United States of $11.7 billion.

GameStop has ruled this market for years without much competition – as much as I like Goozex, it's a tiny player in comparison. But others are moving in. When Amazon announced recently that it would be entering this fray, allowing customers to send in their old games for credit, GameStop's share price dropped 14 percent by the end of the day. Toys R Us also recently launched a test program for selling used games at a few of its stores in New York.