Here it is http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23357

The thing I found interesting was the gross profit Gamestop makes on new software.

It is 21%.

Meaning that when they sell a 60$ game they get to keep 21% of it.

Which means they buy those games for 47.4$ or less ( actually a little less than that as gross profit includes cost of sales).

So we can probably round this to around 47$....

Actually lower than what most people estimate how much big retailer get to keep on software sales.

Without knowing their costs, it's hard to know how much they actually pay for software. I think I've seen estimates of 50-60% of the MSRP.

Still, a 20% margin is pretty damn nice for them. And to think used software is even more lucrative.

Well although a very simplistic way of looking at it yes that would be the average. But it's not as if everyone sells there games to them for that price. Depends on time from the release, popularity, and if bought in bulk. Not to mention how long they sit in the warehouses.

But that's just good business model right there for gamestop. Especially on the Used stuff. Almost half of it is pure profit. Capitalism at its best.

I would estimate they pay less than $40 for a $60 priced game.

Less than 40$ seem very doubtfull, my estimate is around 45$, if they payed less than 40$ their gross profit on new games would be higher, not mentionning how little the publishers would be getting for the games...

 I'm terrible at economic terms. .. I dont know exaclty the definition of "gross profit" and "gross margin".

Remember also that even though the games are $60 as new, the average selling price of a game is significantly lower during it's course. You have to include all the games that start at $60 but end up selling the bulk of their sales from the bargain bins.

Well a 40$ or less game would end up leaving less than 25$/game for third parties publishers, that seem low.

Gamestop doesn't have that much bargain bin sales of new games either, they order a minimum number of copies and then push prospective buyers toward their used games. It's not in their interest to have too many copies of a new game.

That was very useful info. You are right, the bargain bins are very tiny in Gamestop shops (called Game here in Europe), meaning that the proportion of sales at $60 should be pretty high and thus the average selling price. So maybe $45 is possible. That would be great.

Btw, why is it that this number is so hard to get? I mean there must be thousands of people working in game stores knowing how much they pay to the distributor, and u'd think a few of them had posted this on forums like this already. But I still only ever see speculation about this and no facts.

I rarely by from GS because I just can't find any good deals there.
I buy almost all of my games used, but I prefer to buy from amazon resellers or ebay.