Retail

GameStop: Retro game sales to be online only

GameStop: Retro game sales to be online only

Mon 10 Sep 2012 9:47am GMT / 5:47am EDT / 2:47am PDT
Retail

CEO Paul Raines explains "we own a lot of old product"

GameStop

gamestop.com

GameStop CEO Paul Raines has clarified recent talk of the retailer selling "vintage" games, suggesting it will be an online only service.

"We've thought about this vintage thing as an online initiative, and that's where we're doing most of our work," Raines told Joystiq.

"Part of what we have to do is we have to go source a lot of this product, get customers to trade some of their old product with us, and go find some old consoles, but we also own a lot of old product."

He wouldn't go into detail on the range of vintage products it intended to stock.

"We're thinking about everything. Nothing we'd really want to call out yet. Our dotcom team is right now grinding through a lot of opportunities to see what's out there and see what we can get our hands on and what we can merchandise."

He also recognised the value of classic titles to the gaming community.

"If you go to eBay and some of the online marketplaces, some of these vintage gaming titles are very valuable," he added.

"We've got a lot of gamers here, and a lot of people who have a lot of older, vintage stuff in their collections, so we just thought it's an interesting time to start thinking about bringing this to our best PowerUp members and giving them a chance."

4 Comments

Christopher Bowen
Editor in Chief

Gaming Bus

Fair cop. Let's face it: they don't have the space in the stores.

Which is fine, as I'm all for the death of brick-and-mortar.

EDIT: It should also be noted that, according to the prices I've seen so far, their prices SUCK, and they're only for Power Up Rewards people, which skews the price even further. You have to buy hundreds of dollars of crap to be able to overpay for an NES game.

Edited 1 times. Last edit by Christopher Bowen on 10th September 2012 4:05pm

Posted:8 months ago

#1

Hugo Trepanier
Senior UI Designer

Hibernum

How big of a market is there for this though? I understand a lot of people feel nostalgic about the old gaming days - I myself have kept all my old Sierra and LucasArts adventure games on floppy discs - but this feels to me like a niche market nonetheless. I can't picture today's iGeneration getting excited about a chunky, colorless old GameBoy for more than 30 seconds.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Posted:8 months ago

#2

Joe Winkler
trained retail salesman

Expert

We tried to sell some "oldschool" games at Gamestop (EB Games at that time) in Germany. We were not allowed to go too far back (16bit era etc.), but with the right team it worked well. Of course we didn't buy/sell any old sport titles or titles with horrible reviews. Our team had a hand for great oldtimers and we could perfectly rely on each other. We only picked the uncommon stuff and games that are/were worth being collected. Most of the regular customers appreaciated the effort and liked our handling with those titles. Problem was that at a certain point it was forbidden to buy old games that weren't part of the inventory control system anymore.

The market is definitly there, problem is to find the right customers ;)

Posted:8 months ago

#3

Greg Wilcox
Creator, Destroy All Fanboys!

Hmmm. Maybe I can FINALLY find the rest of that PS2 copy of Baldur's Gate Dark Allince that STILL sits on the shelf in the GS near me. It's been there for maybe three years and they NEVER can find the damn game but refused to even sell me the case and manual (which were in nice shape).

@Hugo: Oh, you're wrong, alright - us old people like out "retro" games and some of feel sorry for the iGen folk and their long-ass list of games that will be ENTIRELY lost to history save for the ones that sold a bajillion even though they weren't all that good or innovative.

Ah well.

Posted:8 months ago

#4

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