What retailers do with oversihpment?

[dunno001]

Retailers actually have quite a few options. For newer titles, sending them back is a common option. The wholesaler takes them back in, and gives them full credit toward all received copies. In turn, they will re-shrinkwrap them, and resell them to anyone looking to buy them.

For semi-old titles, a deal may be negotiated on the wholesale price. Rather than taking back 10K copies at $48 wholesale ($480K, from normal wholesale of a $60 retail game), they may offer the store a break on those copies, and give them $18 credit, effectively making the price $30 wholesale, and then the retailer could sell them for $40 and still profit.

For the really old ones, a few other courses of action may happen, though they are more rare. The wholesaler may give full credit back and ask for the copies to be destroyed. Usually some small sign of proof is sent back rather than the whole package. (This is the norm in the book industry, also.) Another more common route, they may be liquidated, and offered to the retailer at wholesale cost. This is usually where those dirt-cheap games come from. (That $5 new game probably just gives base print costs back to the publisher.)

Finally, there's the "oops, we held it too long" case. This is when the retailer is screwed. The item now is completely OOP and no longer supported. It may be due to the rights for it being lost, or being outdated. Any new PS1, Gamecube, or XBox game (or older) would now fall into this category. Most retailers don't hold things to this point without getting a liquidation deal.

Of course, any of these may happen at any point. A store may force sendbacks because they do not feel that they could reasonably sell that many copies at any price. A new game that bombs or is overproduced (like Tekken 6) may not be asked for in a shipback, and lowered fairly quickly. There's still a few other variables, too, such as the purchase agreement. The retailer may be required to keep a certain number of the copies shipped, or may have even been purchased under non-returnable terms in exchange for a larger discount up front. Who knows what could happen, but in the case of Tekken 6, wait a month. I think the price will go down.