Quote:
|
Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce
Make lemonade from those lemons, Man. Open up a place where people can trade in and buy used games. You could be that third party.  |
Uh uh. I could go off on a dozen different rants about how indy game stores are a no-win proposition right now -- ten years ago, maybe some stores had a chance, but not now -- but I'll stick to the used game issue as an example.
First off, any used game is that for a very simple reason -- somebody decided that it wasn't worth playing or owning any more. Obvious, but worth repeating for its implications; if it was that good and noteworthy, it wouldn't have been traded in. (This is why certain games like Intelligent Qube are holy grails on the used market, as _nobody_ gives them up once they've got them and they're long out of print.)
Even at large chains, the majority of used games sit and sit and sit and gather dust because of that principle; those who really wanted them to begin with bought them new, and those who didn't probably won't be moved by a $5 price difference. If a game is known to suck, ANY price difference probably won't move it -- I've passed by my share of moth-eaten $0.99 PS1 shovelware, for instance. What store owners hope to tap into is one of two things:
1) Someone sees a used game at a moderate discount and thinks "Okay, I didn't buy that when it was new, but at _this_ price point it's worth the risk."
2) Someone sees a used game at a DEEP discount and figures "Ah, screw it, how bad can it be for $3.99?" This is called "getting SOMETHING back on your investment."
This leads into the pricing dilemma that I like to call the Shelby Trap, named for the owner of a local Microplay with whom I debated this very issue repeatedly.
The problem for Shelby was that he had a ton of inventory, but so did the EB and Funco down the street. With very specific exceptions, older games depreciate RAPIDLY, particularly when new systems are out or imminent. As such, Shelby had a store full of aging white elephants that he'd paid a fair amount of money for.
Now, your big chains can knock prices way down on such items just to get them out of the store and make room for more profitable items. Shelby, on the other hand, had a mental block where if he'd paid $X for an item, he _had_ to get $X+1 for it or the world would collapse. Never mind that EB also had a copy of J. Random 3DO Game and couldn't sell it at $9.99; Shelby kept that $40 sticker on the case and would say "Well, it USED to be $50!" when pressed.
Shelby's argument was simple: if he didn't sell for more than he paid for everything, he'd lose money and go out of business. He seemed to live in hopes that some clueless parent or nostalgia seeker would come in and say " Ah! A stack of 3DO games! I don't care what they cost, I MUST HAVE THEM!", blissfully ignorant of what they went for elsewhere.
Seemingly lost on him was the notion that if a game sits on the shelf, forever unsold, the potential return on the investment doesn't matter; the ACTUAL return is <b>ZERO</b>.
When he finally gave up and held a massive going-out-of-business sale, regulars and newcomers alike cleaned him out of a lot of his stuff. He clasped his head like a stunned monkey, mumbling things like "Where were these people three months ago?" Well, where were those _prices_ three months ago?
The above happened ten years ago. This was in an era where eBay was in its relative infancy. Broadband internet access was still exclusively the province of government, businesses and universities, and online distribution of CD-ROM images was out of reach of America's households, thus limiting the "hey, free bootleg games!" drain on used sales. And even then, indy games stores flopped left and right. Today, with 3,000 eBay sellers undercutting the low end and lots of gamers pulling games off of USENET regularly? No chance in hell.
Lesson 2 (how indy stores can't compete on NEW games) and Lesson 3 (why stores don't carry imports any more) will be posted in about three years from now when I'll have the energy to rant properly.