THE MARKET FOR COMPUTER AND VIDEO GAMES
Issue 608 Friday October 8 2010 £3.25
04 Blockbuster plans UK rental giant reveals its ambitious objectives despite trouble at its US parent
06 Grainger grows Rapidly growing indie wants to open five more stores over the next three months
09 Bon Jovi talks to MCV Rock legends partners with MTV on post- launch Rock Band 3 activity
26Sega’s strengths MCV speaks to Sega’s new European boss Jurgen Post on his plans for the publisher
30 Why go to LGC? Ten reasons why you must attend this year’s London Games Conference
32 Microsoft comes of Age The platform holder wants to be a major player on PC again with Age of Empires
EVERY BUYER EVERY BRANCH EVERY INDIE EVERY WEEK INCORPORATING Pre-owned goes mainstream
Almost 3,000 UK outlets offer second-hand games services, MCV data shows – 1,000 more than a year ago ASDA: NATIONAL PUSH NEXT WEEK
by Michael French & Christopher Dring
PUBLISHERS hate it, but punters love it – and now it’s official: pre-owned is everywhere.
The number of outlets offering second-hand games and trade-in services has grown by 1,000 stores this year, MCV research has shown. Tesco and Argos have both taken second-hand schemes national in recent months. Meanwhile, MCV can reveal Asda will also add the service to 234 stores after it introduced an eye-rasing ‘FIFA for 97p’ trade-in deal last weekend. It’s a marked increase on the second-hand games market of 2009, where our data suggested 2,000 stores – mainly specialists – offered the service.
But how long will this pre- owned boom last in the face of publisher attempts to slow it with second-user charges? Specialists don’t know the answer – but don’t care, either. Instead they say it has
legitimised an otherwise contentious part of the trade. “Our pre-owned business goes from strength-to-strength –
“
Games just a week or so old are the target of trade-in schemes
it’s a strong and growing part of our mix,” said GAME CEO Ian Shepherd. “No one can be bold
Competitors come in and only add credibility to the trade-in and pre-owned end of the business.
Ian Shepherd, GAME
“Competitors come in and only add credibility to the trade-in and pre-owned end of the business.”
enough to claim such a thing as 100 per cent share. Is there room for others in the market? Yes, there probably is.
”
Grainger Games’ Phil Moore added: “I think the fact that the grocers are getting into pre-owned will be an interesting slant for customers. I think that will push it into the minds of people who might not have seen it as a viable retail option.”
234 Asda supermarkets will accept trade- ins from next week. That’s two-thirds of the supermarket giant’s store count. The new service is called Buy, Play, Trade, and covers Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and DS.
GAME: ‘SECOND USER CHARGES HAVEN’T HURT US’
THE WIDE-SPREAD efforts by publishers to earn extra money from pre-owned games hasn’t dented GAME’s second-hand game business. This year EA, Sony and THQ
have introduced new measures that mean owners of games like Mass Effect 2, SOCOM: Fireteam Bravo 3
and UFC Undisputed 2010must pay for an extra online access code if they bought the game second-hand. “Certainly, publishers are
using content to extend the life of games to extend the reasons to keep them – that’s a good thing, as it’s good for us and we’ll sell more of the games,” said GAME CEO Ian Shepherd. But these ‘second user
charges’ haven’t diminished interest in pre-owned games. “No we’ve not seen the changes in the commercial nature of how some games have launched make any impact on the trade-in category. It’s still a strong part of our business.”
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