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I thought this was interesting so I'm reposting here. Fallout 3 was the only game to get in the top 10 reselling games other than games on a Nintendo platform. Bethesda was the only publisher to outperform Nintendo, and the Wii and DS top the console resale values.

I would also like to point out that this just shows how dominant & desireable Nintendo is. Demand is high enough that the used market gets a nice boost in value.

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http://blog.videogamepricecharts.com/2009/01/2008-game-publisher-resale-values.html

Publisher Resale Values

The list of publisher resale values below includes every publisher with six or more games released in 2008. The '% Change' column is the average change in resale price from the original MSRP to the average price during December 2008.

Top Ten Game Publishers By Resale Value

All Game Publishers By Resale Value

Console Resale Values

The list of resale values by console shown below is an average of all the games released during 2008 for each console with the average MSRP and average price in December used to calculate the '% Change'.

Console By Average Resale Value Per Game

Video Game Resale Values

The top 10 and bottom 10 games by resale value and shown in the tables below. The games are ranked by '% Change' from the original MSRP to the average price during December 2008.

Best Game Resale Values

Worst Game Resale Values

What Causes High or Low Resale Values

There are many factors that effect a game's resale value like the quality of the game, the genre of the game, if its a collector's edition, and if it is aimed at casual gamers or hardcore gamers. If a video game is horrible with no replay value, the resale value will generally drop really quickly. While a top-notch game with great single player, compelling online play, and lots of re-playability will keep its value longer because fewer people want to sell their copy and lots of people want to buy it.

Casual games generally have better resale values as well because casual gamers are buying games that they can continue to play over and over with friends. Casual games also don't have front loaded sales where the vast majority of copies sell within the first month. They will continue to sell consistently for months (Wii Fit and Mario Kart Wii in the top 10 NPD sales every month since their release is a good example of this).

Many hardcore gamers on the other hand buy games the day they come out, beat it very quickly, and then resell it so they can buy another game. The demand for the games is very front loaded. With demand lower in the months following release and a big supply of used games hitting the market, the resale prices drop.

The three consoles with the best resale values are the ones generally associated with casual gamers and games, Wii, Nintendo DS, and Playstation 2. The two worst in terms of resale value are the two with the highest concentration of 'hardcore' gamers, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

Another factor causing higher resale prices on casual consoles is retailers themselves. "It is no surprise that Wii titles hold on to their value more than any other platform." says Jesse Divnich from EEDAR "Retailers don't fully understand the Wii consumer yet which often leads to retail sell-outs, which correlates with higher resale prices." The top four titles on the top games by resale price list are Wii games that were sold out at many stores at the end of 2008.

Why on earth can you make a profit on Rapala Fishing Frenzy?

Well, my father in law is a fisher, and if he had a Wii he would probably pick up it up because of the Rapala name alone. Since the game is in such low supply, and the wii supposedly sells to all these casuals, it is good conditions for a used game to make a profit.

http://www.videogamepricecharts.com/game/wii/pinball-hall-of-fame:-the-williams-collection

As a further example of how a game like that can go more for used than new. Pinball hall of Fame: The Williams Collection for Wii jumped in price in December. Turns out, that Amazon stopped carrying it for a week. The used prices instantly jumped to $60 and stayed that way until they started selling it again for $10 OVER MSRP.

This website only tracked that the game went up in price, they don't show the max price which was WAY over MSRP.

Two observations that I had about the lists.

First, what already has been said about the desirablity of the Wii system and its Nintendo games. Indications of what those games having legs does for the resale prices. Versus the play-one-time-and-dump games of PS3 and X360.

Second, while Wii admittedly gets a lot of low quality games, per the resale market place, it is X360 that suffers the worse, based on the number of games it has in the bottom 10.