It's the year 2015, but I still buy quite a few old video games -- and I don't mean last year's Call of Duty, I mean Solomon's Key for the NES or a Japanese import copy of Super Mario Picross for the Super Famicom. Usually I do this at small stores like Freaks and Geeks in Denton, or I roam the show floor of events like SGC. On occasion, I've been known to hit up eBay.
Apparently Grapevine-based GameStop wants a chance at getting some of that money.
As originally reported by IGN, the video game retailer is about to start accepting old games and systems (going back to the original Nintendo Entertainment System) as trade-ins at about 250 test locations in New York City and Birmingham -- sorry, fellow Texans. They're going to start collecting them and shipping them off to their Refurbishment Operations Center (which is here in Texas) so they can be prepped for new ownership.
"NYC and Birmingham were selected as both have a great cross section of the types of gamers we are trying to reach and we think will give us the results we need to potentially move forward in a bigger way in this category," A GameStop representative told me via e-mail.
I'm all for having more places to shop for old games, but unfortunately it sounds like this retro experience will only happen online. Old games and systems will only be sold online and through the retailer's web-in-store system.
"The plan is currently to only sell retro gaming products online and through our in-store web ordering program," GameStop confirmed to me. "That could certainly change in the future, but we currently don't have any plans to ship the product into stores."
I wondered if this move was prompted by the increased importance of digital game sales in the current gaming landscape. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo all sell games for their systems digitally, which cuts into GameStop's pre-owned market. But GameStop says this wasn't the primary factor in going retro.
" The opportunity for GameStop to participate in the retro gaming business isn't influenced in any way by other factors in the business," they told GuideLive. As the leader in new and preowned video gaming retail, retro gaming is a natural extension of what we do and it provides another value opportunity for GameStop customers."
