Best Buy ups the stakes in used game sales

The used game marketplace is getting crowded, with Amazon, Wal-Mart and others all gunning for a slice of the lucrative pie GameStop has been keeping to itself for all these years. Now Best Buy is taking a new approach that could change the game.

Cheap Ass Gamer reports the chain has begun testing a new program that sells new copies of games for the same price that GameStop and GameCrazy are charging for the used equivalent. 

It’s a very limited test now, seemingly limited to a single Utah location, but a very significant one. Used games tend to be about $5 cheaper than new ones. But game publishers are (in general) adamantly opposed to used game sales, since it cuts into their bottom line. (Retailers pocket the cash without a wholesale expenditure.)

Best Buy's program gives consumers the lower prices they’re looking for, while keeping the industry happy. (And shouldn’t cost Best Buy as much as you might immediately think, since the typical buyer won’t want to go through the process of getting the used price, then heading over to Best Buy. Most will simply buy the game at full retail.)

There is, of course, not even the vaguest hint that the industry has anything to do with this Best Buy test and it almost certainly doesn’t – but if this catches on, it’s not hard to imagine game companies making sure the big box retailer gets preferential shipping – and publisher revenues see an increase.

Image courtesy of Cheap Ass Gamer