theprof00 said:
Well, without benV to confirm, it's hard to figure out exactly what the cause was. I did read all his posts during the time, and nothing was really hinting at what the reasoning could be. That being said, I do think you theory could be part of the puzzle, but allow me to also provide you with some corner pieces. 1. The system for trading in used games required the integration of the windows azure cloud platform into the gamestop functionality. While some members here swore that it must have been free for "trusted partners" (ironic, since gamestop was not to be trusted lol), the very fact that they'd have to alter their entire POS to accomodate for a new network could have been, at the least a hassle, and at the most, costly..not to mention that it's an online database, not an in-store one...which they currently use. 2. The trade in system took a piece of the pie, gave it to devs, and took another slice and gave it to microsoft (for whatever reason) and it also set trade in prices. That's not just revenue they're controlling, it's everything. 3. Two part: 4. The console itself. We heard no details regarding trade-ins and how they could be returned or fixed for that matter.
Now, another thing we know is that the digital program would have given gamestop a pretty big share of reseller market. With mom and pop shops unable to integrate with azure, and ebay and amazon basically untrustworthy for resale, gamestop would've seen significantly more traffic. What we can deduce here, is that the extra profits from this additional traffic was offset by the downsides, and likely by a large amount. Breaking even wouldn't have been such a concern as to stop pre-orders. I could theorize that the added traffic at lower margins could have played a part, necessitating higher overhead for more workers and upgrades, as well as the loss of freedom to price how they wanted ultimately decided the change of course. Without the azure system, the whole strategy is kaput. It makes a lot of sense then, why MS took away virtually everything they were offering when all us consumers were simply saying "just remove these parts". Obviously, you can't remove parts of it piecemeal if the core system is missing. |
You are absolutely right. Ultimately something went down with Gamestop and they pulled a power play. MS had no choice but to conceede. Thing is, if Gamestop wasn't getting a bad deal, MS would have pushed this through regardless of what people said.