Best Buy and Walmart's Used Game Kiosk Supplier e-Play Suspends Operations
e-Play kiosks allowed shoppers to trade in Wii, Xbox or PlayStation games for credit--on a gift card in the case of Best Buy while Walmart paid directly onto a credit card. The self-service kiosks also rented video games and movies.
e-Play's website simply states that "e-Play, LLC has suspended operations. Thank you to all our customers. For more information call 1-866-602-6014." Shacknews was greeted by an automated message explaining how to return games and inviting us to leave a message when we gave the number a ring on the old blower.
Walmart began using the kiosks with a pilot scheme of seventy-seven stores in May, 2009, prompting the industry's most prolific talking head Michael Pachter to scoff "Even if this takes off, it's not going to make much of a dent in the used market... I don't see it being a big deal." Best Buy followed in June with a scheme starting in two stores.
Several publishers have publicly criticised used game sales. Packing 'free' downloadable content with new copies is becoming an increasingly popular method of discouraging them, with recent releases Forza 3 and the EA-published Mass Effect 2, The Saboteur and Dragon Age: Origins all containing single-use DLC codes.
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So does this mean that the publishers' tactics worked and ran these guys out of business?
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I don't think so. It seems like e-Play didn't really try to compete with Gamestop. There were no incentives or deals with e-Play and this really works for Gamestop. I know many people who trade-in to GS because they run promotions on new games (trade ex amount of games and get this new game for 19.99).
Also, I have noticed that Gamestop's in my area now require a thumb print/police item form when trading in anything. I wonder if this will put a dent in trade-in section? Maybe bring more people to Amazon?
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The laws in some states put Gamestop under state pawn laws. Whenever you trade in anything to these particular stores, they are required by law to hold the product for a certain number of days before they can resell; in case someone were to report stolen goods to the police, and they needed to do any kind of investigating to locate the supposed stolen goods. It's a huge headache for the guys that work there, but it doesn't impact them too much.
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