Circuit City Testing Used Game Sales

[Tan]

Currently, circuitcity.com's pre-owned offerings are quite limited. Used PlayStation 2 software includes just 15 titles, with games such as the Guitar Hero II bundle ($74.99) and Lego Star Wars II ($17.99). Xbox 360 currently has 12 used offerings, PSP has seven and Xbox has six.

Lazard analyst Colin Sebastian said that Circuit City's interest in the used market is of “limited” threat to used games leader GameStop.

Sebastian noted that it's not the first time a big-box retailer has tried to get into used games, as Best Buy tested the same waters last year with what Sebastian called “limited success.”

He also points out that while the used games market is a highly profitable business, there are a significant amount of hurdles to overcome managing used games. Retailers have to have in place a dedicated inventory tracking system, an adequate way to restock high-demand products and a sales team that knows how to evaluate used titles.

Sebastian said that used videgame products generate over $1 billion in revenues in North America annually, with almost 50 percent gross margins. He added that about 25 percent of specialty game retailers' revenue comes from used product sales.

[Tynstar]

Hmmm i will have to check circuitcity.com out. Thanks for the info.

Just checked them out and not much of a savings.

[Tan]

We don't have CC's up here, per say, but a spin-off store if that makes any sense. It's called "The Source: by Circuit City". $17.99 is a great price for Lego Star Wars II though. $3.96 for The Punisher (Xbox), some nice DS game prices too.

[Tynstar]

I was looking at 360 games.

$3.96 was the price for a new Punisher not a used one.