4 ms·

15 bucks sounds great to me. It's kind of preposterous that you would expect a game to be a useful store of value. Gaming is the cheapest $/entertainment-hour y

15 bucks sounds great to me. It's kind of preposterous that you would expect a game to be a useful store of value. Gaming is the cheapest $/entertainment-hour you can get...

vel0city 3y ago
To me personally, its not that the used copy was only then worth $15, it is the massive spread between what they'll buy it from you versus what they'll then turn around and try and sell it for. Buy the $60 new game off me for $5 for all I care, but when I turn around and see them immediately stick it on the shelf for $40+ I'll feel like I got a bad deal.
- moate 3y ago
  Exactly. And obviously the biz model isn't working anymore or they wouldn't be in this situation.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  Do you feel like a bad deal when you buy a movie-ticket for a group at say $15 x 6 (~$90 + food), when about 3 months later you can buy the same movie for just $10 and watch it in the comfort of your own home? Games have values: the value goes up at launch so that you can play it before spoilers leak to the internet. Then, after it is a bit stale, it declines in value a few months later. After a few years, it might go up in value if people have fond memories of the game and it becomes retro, but otherwise it probably becomes completely worthless.
  - moate 3y ago
    I can't speak for the OP, but for me, the problem is the obvious arbitrage on the used games by GS. I think I can say the market agrees with us, the company has been slowly dying for years and would likely be in a position like Bed Bath & Beyond and the many other large physical retailers who didn't find a way to pivot were it not for a weird group of anti-investors pwning short positions and then the ensuing media pile on. (Your metaphor is also flawed as the theater and home theater experiences are very different, where as "playing a game for the first time, in my own home now" vs "playing a game for the first time, in my own home, 3 months from now" are pretty marginal differences, especially for single player games. It's why I rarely buy games at launch, but I also don't care about video game "spoilers")
    - dragontamer 3y ago
      The opposite. Bid-ask spreads are inversely proportional to volume. The less volume there is in a marketplace, the larger the bid-ask spreads get. If you trade in the Options market, you'll see 30% to 50% differences in bid-ask spreads on the thinly traded stocks. Similarly, video game used-market has been dying (or at least, the marketplace owned by Gamestop), so we're seeing that lesser volume with an increase in bid-ask spread. Play an obscure trading card game like Magi Nations, you'll see the same thing. There's just not a lot of players, not a lot of traders, so the spreads are huge. Play a popular game with a popular marketplace like Magic the Gathering, and the bid/ask spreads are much closer. ------------- The less popular a marketplace is, the longer inventory will sit in warehouses (leading to higher risks and possibly larger losses for the market-makers). Thereby, forcing Gamestop to increase the bid-ask spread. When Gamestop was popular 10 to 20 years ago, there was enough volume to keep the used-buy vs used-sell prices closer together.
      - vel0city 3y ago
        > If you trade in the Options market, you'll see 30% to 50% differences in bid-ask spreads on the thinly traded stocks. If the spread was only 30-50% I wouldn't mind. Gamestop's spread between bid-ask for used games (even popular new ones) is like 400-500%.
        dragontamer 3y ago
        That doesn't change anything I said earlier. The worse and worse a marketplace does, the more and more the owner is forced to increase the bid-ask spread. Not everything is as efficiently run as the New York Stock Exchange. When you start getting to more obscure games and such, the bid ask spread balloon. 2023 is a different time than 2003. The used market is dying, and its dying because its dying, and the market is forced to make prices worse because its dying and that's causing worse prices to happen. Its a death cycle. Now maybe with good management and good investment, Gamestop can try to stop this spiral by losing money on sales and trying to offer a smaller bid-ask spread. But the company is more aligned to the lotto-tickets they got from the memestonk APEs and is more interested in building a new internet store than fixing the fundamental marketplace issues.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    Once again, its not that later the game isn't worth the same. Buy it off me for $1, its fine. I totally get that I shouldn't get anywhere near the new price for the used merchandise, even though its still probably 90%+ the same quality and they're still asking $60 for a new copy. Lots of people will still prefer the new in box experience, and there's definitely a chance a disc might be unplayable and probably doesn't have all the pack-in stuff. But imagine if you go to someplace like a pawn shop and they say "gosh this thing just isn't worth much at all, best I can do is $1." Then you see them stick it on the shelf with a $100 price tag and turn it around a few days later. Seems like maybe you should have gotten more than $1 out of it, right? Its the same thing without as extreme of a markup, they'll offer you like $10 for a game they then stick on the shelf for $40-50. I realize they need some amount of margin, but it just felt more and more like a bad deal as they kept used prices closer to launch prices while offering less and less for used games. I don't mind the idea of spending $$$ on a game and not expecting to sell it later. Most of my game spending these last few years has been entirely on digital marketplaces with practically zero chance of resale. I'm just saying Gamestop's used market made me ultimately like brand less over time as their spread between what they'd buy at versus what they'd expect to sell at got fatter and fatter. If the game's supposedly only worth $10, I shouldn't see it on the shelf for 4x the price the same day.
    - dragontamer 3y ago
      And despite that big fat check of $30 or whatever you see, Gamestop has lost money last quarter and severely declined in revenue. The marketplace is dying. Gamestop is losing money. Even with those tricks its still not looking profitable. ----------- We're not quite at the level of BBBY where the shelves are literally empty. But we all can see that Gamestop is entering a death spiral here. Nothing against the store or anything, but its just not a useful place to shop, and its increasingly becoming a less useful place to sell games too.
      - vel0city 3y ago
        > And despite that big fat check of $30 or whatever you see, Gamestop has lost money last quarter and severely declined in revenue. But you see that's my point. In my opinion, pushing away their core audience through such crappy buy-ask spreads they've accelerated their own demise. They treated it as their cash cow for a while and kept jacking up their spread, and now most people just don't care about trading games anymore. From my perspective there's almost zero benefit to trading in the physical game or buying used since the discount isn't much at all, might as well just buy it direct from the digital marketplace. I know for me, they'd have made significantly more off my friends and me the past several years if their bid-ask spread hadn't driven us away from the store seeing them as a greedy store. A few dozen used trades each versus literally $0 as there's no point in shopping there versus Target or Walmart or the digital marketplace. They had one thing that made them unique, and they ruined it over the years. And I disagree that the entire used games marketplace is dead, but I do agree its dying. There's a small local chain of used movies, music, and games nearby they seem to turn of a good bit of merchandise. They don't set up locations in expensive real estate locations and they're not spending a lot of money trying to make NFT marketplaces, and from what I gather they're probably pretty low debt so they're not forced to make a lot of interest payments.

15 bucks sounds great to me. It's kind of preposterous that you would expect a game to be a useful store of value. Gaming is the cheapest $/entertainment-hour you can get...

vel0city 3y ago

To me personally, its not that the used copy was only then worth $15, it is the massive spread between what they'll buy it from you versus what they'll then turn around and try and sell it for. Buy the $60 new game off me for $5 for all I care, but when I turn around and see them immediately stick it on the shelf for $40+ I'll feel like I got a bad deal.

moate 3y ago
Exactly. And obviously the biz model isn't working anymore or they wouldn't be in this situation.
dragontamer 3y ago
Do you feel like a bad deal when you buy a movie-ticket for a group at say $15 x 6 (~$90 + food), when about 3 months later you can buy the same movie for just $10 and watch it in the comfort of your own home? Games have values: the value goes up at launch so that you can play it before spoilers leak to the internet. Then, after it is a bit stale, it declines in value a few months later. After a few years, it might go up in value if people have fond memories of the game and it becomes retro, but otherwise it probably becomes completely worthless.
- moate 3y ago
  I can't speak for the OP, but for me, the problem is the obvious arbitrage on the used games by GS. I think I can say the market agrees with us, the company has been slowly dying for years and would likely be in a position like Bed Bath & Beyond and the many other large physical retailers who didn't find a way to pivot were it not for a weird group of anti-investors pwning short positions and then the ensuing media pile on. (Your metaphor is also flawed as the theater and home theater experiences are very different, where as "playing a game for the first time, in my own home now" vs "playing a game for the first time, in my own home, 3 months from now" are pretty marginal differences, especially for single player games. It's why I rarely buy games at launch, but I also don't care about video game "spoilers")
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    The opposite. Bid-ask spreads are inversely proportional to volume. The less volume there is in a marketplace, the larger the bid-ask spreads get. If you trade in the Options market, you'll see 30% to 50% differences in bid-ask spreads on the thinly traded stocks. Similarly, video game used-market has been dying (or at least, the marketplace owned by Gamestop), so we're seeing that lesser volume with an increase in bid-ask spread. Play an obscure trading card game like Magi Nations, you'll see the same thing. There's just not a lot of players, not a lot of traders, so the spreads are huge. Play a popular game with a popular marketplace like Magic the Gathering, and the bid/ask spreads are much closer. ------------- The less popular a marketplace is, the longer inventory will sit in warehouses (leading to higher risks and possibly larger losses for the market-makers). Thereby, forcing Gamestop to increase the bid-ask spread. When Gamestop was popular 10 to 20 years ago, there was enough volume to keep the used-buy vs used-sell prices closer together.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      > If you trade in the Options market, you'll see 30% to 50% differences in bid-ask spreads on the thinly traded stocks. If the spread was only 30-50% I wouldn't mind. Gamestop's spread between bid-ask for used games (even popular new ones) is like 400-500%.
      - dragontamer 3y ago
        That doesn't change anything I said earlier. The worse and worse a marketplace does, the more and more the owner is forced to increase the bid-ask spread. Not everything is as efficiently run as the New York Stock Exchange. When you start getting to more obscure games and such, the bid ask spread balloon. 2023 is a different time than 2003. The used market is dying, and its dying because its dying, and the market is forced to make prices worse because its dying and that's causing worse prices to happen. Its a death cycle. Now maybe with good management and good investment, Gamestop can try to stop this spiral by losing money on sales and trying to offer a smaller bid-ask spread. But the company is more aligned to the lotto-tickets they got from the memestonk APEs and is more interested in building a new internet store than fixing the fundamental marketplace issues.
- vel0city 3y ago
  Once again, its not that later the game isn't worth the same. Buy it off me for $1, its fine. I totally get that I shouldn't get anywhere near the new price for the used merchandise, even though its still probably 90%+ the same quality and they're still asking $60 for a new copy. Lots of people will still prefer the new in box experience, and there's definitely a chance a disc might be unplayable and probably doesn't have all the pack-in stuff. But imagine if you go to someplace like a pawn shop and they say "gosh this thing just isn't worth much at all, best I can do is $1." Then you see them stick it on the shelf with a $100 price tag and turn it around a few days later. Seems like maybe you should have gotten more than $1 out of it, right? Its the same thing without as extreme of a markup, they'll offer you like $10 for a game they then stick on the shelf for $40-50. I realize they need some amount of margin, but it just felt more and more like a bad deal as they kept used prices closer to launch prices while offering less and less for used games. I don't mind the idea of spending $$$ on a game and not expecting to sell it later. Most of my game spending these last few years has been entirely on digital marketplaces with practically zero chance of resale. I'm just saying Gamestop's used market made me ultimately like brand less over time as their spread between what they'd buy at versus what they'd expect to sell at got fatter and fatter. If the game's supposedly only worth $10, I shouldn't see it on the shelf for 4x the price the same day.
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    And despite that big fat check of $30 or whatever you see, Gamestop has lost money last quarter and severely declined in revenue. The marketplace is dying. Gamestop is losing money. Even with those tricks its still not looking profitable. ----------- We're not quite at the level of BBBY where the shelves are literally empty. But we all can see that Gamestop is entering a death spiral here. Nothing against the store or anything, but its just not a useful place to shop, and its increasingly becoming a less useful place to sell games too.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      > And despite that big fat check of $30 or whatever you see, Gamestop has lost money last quarter and severely declined in revenue. But you see that's my point. In my opinion, pushing away their core audience through such crappy buy-ask spreads they've accelerated their own demise. They treated it as their cash cow for a while and kept jacking up their spread, and now most people just don't care about trading games anymore. From my perspective there's almost zero benefit to trading in the physical game or buying used since the discount isn't much at all, might as well just buy it direct from the digital marketplace. I know for me, they'd have made significantly more off my friends and me the past several years if their bid-ask spread hadn't driven us away from the store seeing them as a greedy store. A few dozen used trades each versus literally $0 as there's no point in shopping there versus Target or Walmart or the digital marketplace. They had one thing that made them unique, and they ruined it over the years. And I disagree that the entire used games marketplace is dead, but I do agree its dying. There's a small local chain of used movies, music, and games nearby they seem to turn of a good bit of merchandise. They don't set up locations in expensive real estate locations and they're not spending a lot of money trying to make NFT marketplaces, and from what I gather they're probably pretty low debt so they're not forced to make a lot of interest payments.