It had to happen sooner or later, but national UK retailer GAME have now formerly ended their 10 day return policy, and with it, an institution for many a gamer.
For as long as I can remember using GAME, or Electronics Boutique as they used to be, they have had the 10 day return/exchange if not happy. By it's nature, it became a way to for us all to try that game we weren't too sure about, safe in the knowledge that GAME would hold your money for that period in case you didn't like it. Ok, so it wasn't exactly like that, I'm trying to illustrate a point here!
However, a lot of people used it as a rental scheme, buying a game, taking it back, swapping, getting another, ad infinitum, ending up paying the cost of one game to try out a few.
Well it seems that GAME have finally cottoned on to this fact and called a stop to the whole thing. Whilst it makes good business sense for them I do wonder about the repercussions , not just for the chain in the short term but also game publishers.
Imagine that, because they no longer have the back up of the 10 day returns i.e. in case they don't like said game, x number of consumers purchase only 5 games a year, compared to 8/9 they would have bought. Assume the avergae cost of each game bought is around £35, given the variety of different console games and prices around. Already that is a far whack of income lost for GAME, and sales numbers lost for the publisher (plus with it bragging rights in the form of the charts). Less sales means less incentive for developers to take a chance on something that isn't already popular or part of the mainstream. You can work out the further effects from there I'm sure.
Along with that you have less second hand games for GAME to sell (obviously it's where trade ins go to), meaning less cheaper, slightly used titles, for those people who don't have enough cash to buy every game as it comes out to choose from.* Again, less sales for GAME.
Publishers though would probably be quite happy about this policy ending, because not only does every second/third/fourth etc hand sale of a title not count towards overall sales (at least not last time I looked into it) and they won't be missing out on a second wave of income. Think about it, all second hand games are essentially pure profit on the face value, all you take out is the price given for the game when the customer traded it in.**
If it weren't for the points card scheme I think GAME could end up suffering from this decision in the short term. Long term, they'll be fine. You don't get to be the UK's biggest retailer without having some serious back up in case the brown runny stuff hits the big swirly thing.
Anyway, I'm off now to look for my cat that I haven't seen since 8am this morning :s I wish the little sod wouldn't do this to me!
*Although I do think that their second hand prices are verging on the ridiculous sometimes, never mind the fact that all of the last three second hand games I bought from them has been a pile of poop and not worked correctly! Hence I don't buy 'em second hand anymore.
** Which is usually shite, unless the game you're getting rid of is less than a month old!
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