Retail Hell

[CrazyGoon]

Retail Hell

Doesn't really apply to me, since I don't buy modern-age games (nor play them), but I'm sure perhaps some of you will take enlightenment from the article. Sounds pretty factual to me anyway.

Comment away!

 

[lordofduct]

WOW!

And I always wondered WHY OH WHY AM I SCREWED IN THE ASS! Its the big brother syndrome, my brother did it to me so Im gonna do it to you and your gonna do it to the next just in spite of the first. And who sits back and smiles, the publisher. Those bastards! This is where free enterprise has brought us. To petty drug cartel standards... shit drug selling has better payoffs then this kinda crap! (probably because the product doesn't fluctuate all that much, and if it does its usually going up).

See this again is yet another reason I don't mind that I don't play vid games anymore. I stopped shopping Wal-Mart for a few reasons, mainly because they treat ME bad and because they are swallowing up the market. (in treating me bad, well let me say I lost my little brother at WalMart once, while looking for him the manager felt I was scaring customers and called the cops on me, nervous? you may ask, well when I get stressed I twitch. Yep, thats it, I twitch, my head pops to the side and shakes a little. They called the cops for that, removed me despite me demanding to find my LITTLE brother first. This was one of many times I was mistreated there.)

Wow, tangent.

Anyways. Atleast it is releaving to know I'm not the only one with the dildo in my ass when I walk into the store. The owner has to walk around that store every day all day with a double sided monster dong jammed so far up his arse he cries latex.

And I thought he just had good posture.

 

[Malakai]

This is both amazing (in a bad way) and surprising, to think that wal-mart would be paying so much for games, considering they're telling all of their american companies to move overseas so they can buy their products cheaper. I've pricematched with them on several occasions and wonder if they get the difference back from their distributors for it. In the past, they've not been a company to lower the prices of games, when other stores like target and bestbuy does.

I live somewhere where the only big store around is wal-mart. There are no video game stores around either. So, without driving 40 miles out of the way, I'm forced to shop there often.

 

[Mask of Destiny]

Originally posted by Malakai@Thu, 2005-06-23 @ 11:56 AM

This is both amazing (in a bad way) and surprising, to think that wal-mart would be paying so much for games, considering they're telling all of their american companies to move overseas so they can buy their products cheaper. I've pricematched with them on several occasions and wonder if they get the difference back from their distributors for it. In the past, they've not been a company to lower the prices of games, when other stores like target and bestbuy does.

It wouldn't surprise me if Walmart has struck deals with the publishers themselves rather than with the distributors. I'm sure they deal in enough volume to do so.

This would also explain why Vivendi was so scared over Steam. Why stick with a publisher that will take most of the profit when you can sell directly to consumers with an online distribution system. Sure you still need to find capital to develop the game in the first place, but there are a lot more options for that if you can take care of distribution.

 

[Malakai]

This just goes to show that these video game shops are making their money off of used games and trading. As I've stated a few times throughout the years in these forums, I went to sell ebgames probably $600 (more or less) of sega cd games, at a time when they were still selling sega cd games in all of the toy and game stores, and I was only offered like $17 for them. These are pawn-shop strategies, making poor, innocent children think that they only pay a couple bucks for brand new games to their suppliers/distributors so that they can maximize their profits.

So, it sounds like anyone wanting to start a small mom and pop video game trading business would have to deal with either ripping people off, or taking a loss (after overhead) selling only new games.

I have tried twice to start a small video game business. The first time, I had a partner, and we sold mostly used, some new, and import games, as well as VCDS and other imported novelties, and we actually made money, as well as always having something new to tinker with (new games, systems coming in all the time,) but my business partner didn't think the money was coming in fast enough, and he wanted to waste all of the profits, and after a lot of fighting, I ended up just selling off my part of the business to my business partner.

We started off making around $1000 to $1500 each month profit, and had very little overhead, which I thought was a pretty good start for part time work.

The next video game business venture, I would get into a local market, less imported stuff, and newer consoles and games. There was just too much competition. Nothing sold, and places like best buy could sometimes sell stuff cheaper than I could acquire wholesale. So, I think that's my last bout with trying to start a video game business.

 

[Pearl Jammzz]

I think you would have a better chance and it would actually be easier to do nothin but used game sells through ebay. You could do that, and work a normal job.

 

[IceDigger]

That is why I dropped my online video game store. Almost 0 profits from games. Really sucked and I did not feel like ripping people off to charge higher prices.

 

[schi0249]

That doesn't surprise me. I've known people at Best Buy, and they told me how crappy their discount is on video game stuff. Only a couple dollars. But electronics, sometimes as much as half off.

 

[racketboy]

Wow -- interesting article

I learned a good bit

Thanks...

Yeah, I really want to expand my "business", but have yet to find the killer thing to sell.

Games and stuff would be cool, but building up a good inventory and keeping it would be tough.

Some of you guys sound like it's not too hard to find good stuff at Goodwill etc, but I never find anything