14 DAY TRIAL // Walmart is planning to launch a large scale program across 3100 US stores in order to sink its teeth into the used games market.
For the time being, GameStop is the unequivocal Supreme Leader of second-hand gaming, and as bad as that may sound, it's a booming over $2 / €1.5 billion business per year. As such, the American retail giant has its sights set on the title, or at least on a piece of the pie.
Consequently, starting March 26, the world's largest retailer will debut its large scale game trade-in program all across America, working in conjunction with CE Exchange, and allowing consumers to swap used games for store credit which can be used to buy anything that Walmart sells. It definitely sounds appealing.
As such, gamers can expect to see used games filling up the shelves anytime this summer. Walmart plans to accept games for all existing console systems, but it will not accept any hardware. The trade-in prices will vary according to a title's popularity, but Duncan Mac Naughton, executive vice president, chief merchandising and marketing officer for Walmart, said that the expected average price per game is expected to be somewhere around the $35 / €25 mark.
CE Exchange will function as a database repository for the value of games, with Walmart simply scanning the game's UPC code and the trade-in value being automatically delivered.
This isn't Walmart's first move toward the used games market, as the retailer has previously launched a pilot program in 2009, but never expanded on it. Used games are far from being an easy business, as over the years Toys R Us, Target and other major retailers have also tried their hand at it but abandoned their test runs.
It is an intrinsically difficult market, as predicting which games will have a high resale value requires a complex forecasting model and allocating inventory between stores is also a difficult matter to tackle. Even more so, store clerks need to know how to evaluate the discs they receive and determine whether they are damaged, with GameStop stating that is has to fix around 14 million used games before reselling them each year, as GamesIndustryBiz reports.
Walmart seems to be comfortable with both the timing of the move as well as the underlying strategy and logistics, and states its goal to be delivering customers the highest trade-in prices and the lowest purchase ones, with the market value they offer being the prime motivation for game owners to participate in their program.