Pachter says Best Buy's new games at used prices program will fail

[gergroy]

mibuokami said:

Onyxmeth said:

If this were to roll out, Gamestop would be able to put an end to it swiftly. Got a huge title coming out that's going to have a monster first week like Modern Warfare 2? All Gamestop has to do is price the used price at something ridiculous like $20 before it even comes out and advertise it. No one will trade the game in anyways since they're just buying them and won't want the bad trade-in value, and Best Buy just took a $40 hit per game on a gigantic release.

This is a war Gamestop cannot lose.

In Australia, some store will offer price match but only if they can prove that the local competitor has to product your quoting in stock (they would literally ring the competitor and ask for availibility). Would a similiar scheme be consider reasonable for BestBuy? Afterall advertising a second hand game for $20 is a lot different than having a copy at $20 for sale

lol, technically this is part of Best Buys price matching policies already.  The employee is suppose to call the competitor to see if they still have the product in question in stock before they match the price.  So in theory, this is how it is suppose to work. 

However, I have worked for Best Buy for almost 5 years now, and I have never called a competitor once.  I've looked up prices on their websites, but thats as far as I've gone.  With so many different gamestops in one city, I don't see employee's actually bothering with calling stores.  It would take like 1-2 hours in the bigger cities just call on a sale that is likely to generate no profit and only 30-50 dollars in revenue.