14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that the used videogames market is beginning to be more and more attractive to big retailer chains that are not necessarily specialized in titles for the current gaming consoles.
After Amazon began accepting used games and re-selling them and after chains like Toys'R'Us and Best Buy entered the market, the biggest retailer of them all, Wal Mart, also appears to be interested in the trend. The company has introduced a used games shop that at the moment is only online based, with brick and mortar locations probably set to follow if the Internet component proves to be successful.
The move is not entirely surprising. Earlier in the year, Wal Mart placed some kiosks, which could only be used to trade in games in some of its stores and this was generated by an inventory now resold online. It seems that the company plans to maintain this separation between how games are traded in, via the kiosks, and how they are offered to interested customers, via the Internet-based stores.
The most obvious target of Wal Mart's move is GameStop, the videogaming-oriented retailer that draws a significant amount of revenue from used game sales. If it can gain a piece of market share, then Wal Mart can use its size and marketing power to attract gamers and to, as some point in the future, threaten the very existence of GameStop.
Michael Pachter, who is an analyst watching the market for Wedbush Morgan, was quoted in a Dow Jones report as saying that the Wal Mart move is not threatening the already established players in the market and that the demographics buying up used games might only respond to moves from GameStop and from Amazon. Of course, it all depends on the prices offered for the used games by Wal Mart and those it charges for them when they are resold.