| yo_john117 said: From what i've seen Gamestop marks up incredibly high. For example I could have sold my copy of Guitar Hero World Tour to gamestop for 1.50 (I didn't cause its a total rip-off) And they sell it for 9.99....From what i've seen the average mark up is about 60% They make a ridiculous amount off of used games (In America at least) |
At first glance, that seems true. What you don't realize is that trade values are based on product quantities (just like any economic system). I'm a fairly new GS employee, and at first I was offended by how little we gave on some games. Then I took a second to try and figure out why.
Yes, you would only get $1.50 for GHWT, and yes, they sell it for $9.99, but did you see how many copies of GHWT were in the drawers? At my Gamestop, we have close to 20 copies for each system. We are never going to sell 85% of those. Same goes with Madden 10. We have close to 50 copies for 360 and PS3 (each). I can assure you we will never sell most of those. If we do, it will be after the game has dropped to $4.99 or less (current price for Madden 09, which we also have a bajillion copies of).
If any economic system is inundated with a certain item (think precious stones or metals), the value of that item drops significantly. That's basic supply and demand. When we get massive quantities of certain games, we can't give very much for the games because they are honestly worthless. All they are doing is taking up space in our drawers for the next year.
So, while it may seem that there is a huge profit margin there, when it comes to games like GHWT, Madden, or anything bundled with a system, the company is actually losing money on the trades. The fact is, we're buying an item from you that we know we will never sell.
Thence we came forth
To rebehold the stars...
