GameStop officially going retro again

[RetroRage]

Test markets in New York and Birmingham with plans to expand later.  Don't expect prices to go down any time soon.

http://m.ign.com/articles...lassic-consoles-and-games

[Shadow Kisuragi]

"Back to the Nintendo Entertainment System".
Damn, I can't flip 300 cartridges of Combat?

[mumboking]

I think of this as a bad thing... What if they start throwing them away?

[Shadow Kisuragi]

Do you really think the casual consumer cares about that? They just want to trade in their old games that they just have lying around. Who cares what happens to it after that?

[mumboking]

It makes more sense to sell them elsewhere, if trade-in value is as bad as I hear.

[Shadow Kisuragi]

You don't realize... THERE IS NO WHERE ELSE FOR CASUAL CONSUMERS IN THE US. Hell, I only have 1 shop within 20 miles of me now that will sell retro games that's not a flea market, and I only know about it because the guy is a vendor at one of the local flea markets. Just about every single brick-and-mortar store has closed up shop, since they can't get high enough margins. This guy mainly stays in business because he gives extremely low trade-in values, and marks up popular games by 50% or higher.

[GrayGhost81]

You don't realize... THERE IS NO WHERE ELSE FOR CASUAL CONSUMERS IN THE US.

Sucks but it's true. Where I live now there is exactly one retro game store "near" me and it is Digital Press. I have the utmost respect for Joe and what he does, but I doubt Gamestop's prices will be any worse than his. It'll just make it more convenient for someone like me if I have the itch to hunt for some old commons in person.

The other huge question is where in the hell are they going to put all this new stock in their tiny little stores?

[SirPsycho]

The plan currently seems to be to sell them online, and only online. So their stores filled with the generation shift, still jam packed with PS3 and 360 shovelware and all the new releases, won't change. They could throw them away, but we all know they would want to cash in on the price bubble, so they could throw away 300 Combat carts and nobody would bat an eyelash.

The question is who is going to dig them up in 30 years?

[GrayGhost81]

The plan currently seems to be to sell them online, and only online.

You're right. I read that wrong the first time.

[tactical_nuke]

The end times begin.

[GrayGhost81]

I know we're all going to lose our minds over this but there was a time not too many years ago when FuncoLand and other stores like GameCrazy sold everything, and life was just peachy.

[MetalFRO]

I didn't realize there was such a lack of retro game stores.  I live 63 miles from the nearest "city", and the only places to get retro games right now are a pawn shop and the Goodwill.  However, another small city 20 miles further down the road has a retro game shop, and they're opening a 2nd location in that city with the pawn shop.  Another city about 70 miles from me has one, and if I drive the 2.5 to 3 hours to the larger cities, there are multiple retro game stores.  All this, and I live in central Nebraska, where most people can't remember anything before the PlayStation, and wouldn't even know what a Sega Saturn was, outside of a handful of us retro gamers/collectors.  I've been lucky to find these shops over the last couple years, I know.

The thing about casual consumers is, there's always Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Shopko, K-Mart (if any stores are still open), Costco, Alco, etc.  Sure, those stores are not as gamer-focused as GameStop is, but they serve the need.  Sometimes, they even have better prices on new stuff than GS has.

@GrayGhost81 - excellent point about the tiny stores.  Some GS locations, like the one I sometimes frequent, are decent size, but yeah, some of them are practically "hole in the wall" size, and sometimes they're very cramped shopping mall locations that wouldn't befit that kind of expansion.  Honestly, we would have been better off if we could have retained Funcoland and EB Games locations, or if Funcoland stayed and remained retro and modern, and something like EB Games or GameStop could have been current gen and MAYBE last gen only, much like they are now.  I lament the death of great old places like Funcoland, Game Dude, and others like them.  I remember buying my NES, complete in box, as an adult at an EB Games store in the mall.  But then I could also go in there and buy the latest PlayStation or Dreamcast game, and I often did.  Thankfully, it seems like the small retro game store chain is making a return, at least in the midwest.  There are at least 3 or 4 here in Nebraska, and when I visited friends in Texas last spring, there were several in that area as well.

[Shadow Kisuragi]

I live in Central Florida, and there's a constant, steady stream of tourists and college students...and yet, places can't seem to stay open. A lot of it is bad business practices, but they're just not generating the amount of trade-ins they need to justify the rent at most of these places.

I used to order from Funcoland all the time, and I have no problem with them selling online like Funco did back in the day. My only problem is not being able to know the condition or have images before purchasing, and the fact that GameStop will LITERALLY be able to dictate prices for the market, since retro titles are no longer in mass circulation.

[techwizard]

definitely a bad thing if your local thrift stores/craigslist have been the go-to for game hunting. where i live that's how it used to be, you could easily find large lots of games on craigslist/usedvictoria and great deals at thrift stores. now there are 6 (soon to be 7 i think) retro game stores ON TOP of 3 or 4 EB Games locations. there's almost 0 available deals locally now as the stores all charge full market value for games, some of them even more than that because they include "shipping" into their local prices.  most people dump games there because it's much easier than selling yourself. to those who are used to amazing deals like the stuff we see zagnorch posting regularly, expect that to become much less common or at least take more effort to find them.

[OatBob]

"Retro" used to be a bigger deal for retailers, because it was the only option for consumers to play lots of games on a budget.  Now, every new title deflates so quickly that you can play all the current-gen games on a budget.  Meanwhile, a retailer like Gamestop can flip the same disc four times and raise some cash every time.