Be Excellent To Each Other

I don't normally visit the highstreet games retailers at all, but checked branches of the two big retail chains t'other day with my girlfriend's sister's boyfriend, who was visiting from Germany. He was in search of some specific PC and Xbox games that are banned in Germany for some reason connected with violence, something like that. Thought I'd tag along too.

75% of the stock was secondhand, no exaggeration. (A lot of you here visit these shops more than I do, you probably realise that already, I knowy.) Where there was brand new games, they were a shelf away from secondhand copies which were £2 to £5 (at best) cheaper. There was no variety apart from chart games without delving into the grimy shelves of "pre-owned" games. Apparently there is no secondhand games in German videogames retailers, pretty much, and although I recall, say, Electronics Boutique used to stock a single shelf of 'pre-owned' games ten years ago or further back, it really never used to be blanket, wall-to-wall pre-owned/pre-burgled. What the heck happened, and when? Did offering £5 store credit for games that would be resold at near RRP become that much more profitable than selling new software?

It's been pretty gradual.

For what it is worth, if the banned games are on Steam, you can gift them to him from the UK.

No idea what "Steam" is! My girlfriend showed him play.com though, so he's bound to be happy now.

Indeed, it's pretty shameful really.
More so when they try and make you buy a second hand copy for £2 less when you try and buy a new game. Or, indeed, when the second hand version costs more.

It's pretty much this reason that I don't buy anything there anymore.

I don't buy anything from there because I can get brand new copies of stuff in online sales for 5-10 quid less than they want for a pre-owned copy.

So what you're saying is that the games publishers are whining fools complaining about the second hand market existing as you all buy brand new anyway rather than horribly scratched second hand stuff?

I got 'The Darkness' for three quid in Cwmbran Game today, but that's an example of how I'll browse the places if they aren't crowded and make the odd impulse buy. They aren't really useful for much else. Gamestation makes me angry to think about - all those retro machines landfilled. I wonder how many Vectrexes the world lost - most stores seemed to have at least one. I'd spend more on retro than new stuff when they stocked it.

To this day, I have never traded anything in at a game store. I just can't bring myself to part with any of my collection.

I rarely buy second hand stuff either.

Game stores have been gradually going the way of the second hand store for years. Last time I was in Gamestation I genuinely had problems telling the difference between the new stuff and second hand stuff! People are bound to buy things and not realise they're second hand.

I always thought Gamestation started out as a second-hand shop.

I traded one game - Colony Wars on the PS1. Then I missed it horribly and I've not traded anything since.
I don't mind buying second hand, though.

Colony Wars - now there's a franchise that died before its time.

Easy to control, fun missions, pretty ships and nebulae... that and G-Police defined my PS experience for some months. I wish I could grab all my old favourites and play them on the PS2 I bought a year or two back and never really use.