I saw an article on gamasutra about a new startup company called Postal Gamer. It is a website that is trying to gain support from game publishers by changing the business model for used games sales, by giving a portion of each used game sale the website makes back to the publisher. In return the publisher is asked to support Postalgamer.com through promotion, mainly by including the envelopes that the website will use in the box with the game when it is manufactured. The website is saying it will be able to offer greater trade-in values and lower prices than Gamestop,in addition to giving the proceeds to publishers because they will not have the overhead costs of physical stores.

The website is saying that the publishers they have reached out to are interested, but they are too afraid to support the website because it would be seen as a move against gamestop, one of their largest retail partners.

What does everone think of this? Does gamestop have anything to worry about? Will postalgamer be able to get any publisher support?

I think it is an interesting business model, but it is probably a few years too late. If they had started doing it before all of the other online retailers then maybe it would have been able to gain some more support. I'll still be interested in following along when it launches later this year.

I agree with you that this idea is a few years too late, and even though it's a good idea I don't think Gamestop and other big sellers of used games would let this fly.

Since the world is going digital, I don't think it'll be a lasting idea. Even if it turns out to be successful, I give it a decade tops.

I think it's great but relative to gamestop publishers don't know what to do. The average consumer is pretty freaking ignorant and without gamestop alot of them wouldn't buy as many games but at the same time gamestop is screwing publishers (and consumers) out of money by pushing used games and trade ins so publishers won't oppose them directly while trying to cut down on their profits and instead screwing the consumer more, which does annoy me. Publishers didn't have a better option before, they do now. Publishers should support this AND offer an extra code with any games that use the code thing with any of the used games purchased with this.

If gamestop has enough control to stop them then things are even worse then I thought and the world isn't even close to digital only. The most advanced places in the world can barely do side by side digtial and the digital sales are alot lower then the physical ones.

Gamestop may have the power to stop it's competition from becoming relevant, but it couldn't and doesn't have the power to stop the world from becoming digital. I'm sure they'll adapt somehow though.

As for digital sales being lower, if physical versions of digital content didn't exist then consumers wouldn't have a choice.

Wow Gamestop has a lot of power!

How exactly could GS stop this if publishers supported it? Digial only right now would also cut sales down dramatically for all games. Probably around a 80% drop in sales of games.

Bribes. How do you know that sales would drop 80%? And the transition to digital will be made; right now doesn't mater that much. LIke I said even if the PostalGamer's business model was successful it wouldnt last much more than a decade.

Honestly this is scary but true. Postal Gamer is asking way to much of the publishers including that ad in every game case would be foolish. If publishers officially supported Postal Gamer they would see GameStop probably threaten to drop their product. GameStop can drop any product it want's off of its shelf.

Does everyone remember how damaging EA's pullout from DreamCast was? This would be a hundred times worse.Gamestop own's EBGames and probably the largest market share of game retailers in North America. Loosing their support on a product would have a huge influence on sales. I don't think any of the major publishers could risk loosing the shelf space at GameStop all so that they can make a little chunk of change in used sales.

Postal Gamer is not going to get support from major publishers as long as GameStop threatens to pull products. Now of course if Activision , EA, UbiSoft all decided at once to support Postal Gamer then GameStop would be powerless they couldn't remove all their products from their shelves. But one big publisher alone if GameStop got mad and limited shelf space or cut it altogether the implications would be massive!

I don't know the exact amount but you can cut out atleast half of it from people who don't have the net, then cut it down farther for people who don't like buying things online, and then cut whats left because they don't have much space to download games so they buy less games, and you are left with a very small sales. Transition might be made in a cerntury or something but right now digital only is impossilbe and will continue to be impossible as long as the whole world doesn't have exceptional internet connections and disks and harddrives advance at the same rate or disks faster then harddrives. In a decade we will be lucky if we have 100% side by side for all consoles.