It's no secret that video game retailer GameStop's bread and butter is the used games market. In fact, in the company's last quarter, GameStop's used games business comprised more than 45% of its gross profit for the period. Other big retailers have tried starting up used game sales of their own, including Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Toys 'R' Us, but GameStop isn't concerned one bit.
“We don't talk about our competition,” Tony Bartel, Executive VP of Merchandising and Marketing for GameStop, told us recently when we asked about companies like Wal-Mart encroaching on GameStop's used games biz. “What we like to talk about is what we do really well. Here's the facts that I can tell you. What's really important from our perspective is that we are giving the person who loves to play games just a little bit more, and part of that is offering them an alternative form of currency, that they can bring in the games they no longer play and trade them in for video games. If you look at the difference between us and the competition, we are the only people that actually take their unwanted games and turn them into new video games. As a result, over 20% of the value of the new games we sell are funded by these trade credits.”
Bartel continued, positioning his company as an “enabler” for the average game buying consumer: “If you stop and think about the role GameStop plays in the industry, we literally enable gamers to come in and sell their unwanted games and buy the new games. That's an important distinction – we are totally focused on helping gamers afford the games that they want to play. So for instance, in the case of Modern Warfare 2, over 20% of the purchase price that people paid for it across the world is being paid for at GameStop by credits that they get from trading in games. And that number has increased this year; it's higher than it's ever been. So that indicates that our model is working extremely well in allowing more people in this difficult economy to afford the games they want to play.”
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