Amador county supervisor Theodore Novelli and GameStop VP John Deegan were on hand for the balloon-decorated ribbon cutting ceremony, as were several other excited onlookers (all pictured left).

"With more customers being attracted to the video game category, they will increasingly find a GameStop convenient to them," noted GameStop COO Dan DeMatteo. "This landmark store opening underscores the strength of our business model and represents a spectacular effort on behalf of our 44,000 employees worldwide."

The core of the GameStop business model is centered around soliciting trade-ins from customers and providing them with in-store credit or cash, which encourages them to spend more money in-store, and then reselling the used goods at double or triple the cost. It's an insanely profitable strategy; used items were responsible for 48.8% of the company's total profits in 2006, though they only accounted for 24.8% of its total sales.

That approach has drawn ire from the gaming community. Many gamers resent GameStop's frequent solicitations for trade-ins and pre-orders, while developers and publishers are upset they don't get a share of the lucrative profits that come from used game sales.

"Used game sales are an access point for many gamers and I think the industry should support that path," Gearbox Software president Randy Pitchford told Shacknews earlier this year, "but there is a problem...The entire used game sales market exists only to support and provide profit to the retailers.

"Healthy retailers are good for our industry," he continued, "but looking at how GameStop is doing, I think they should be passing more value to the developers and publishers."