The market has a "I want it now" approach to buying games.
The video game stores themselves are actually not doing very well and many rely on the trading and selling of older games. Places like Gamestop do not even own the games they sell, the game companies do so when you go in and trade 8 slightly older games for a total of $60 in trade for a game they don't own, they will be able to sell those for games for $280. Up until this year, game developers had strict control over MRSP and games had to sell for $59.99 in order to get a rebate or a retailer would purchase the game for 10% less. For places like Walmart, the games and stuff are loss leaders and they make very little to next to no money on them, and Walmart themselves are testing out the used game market. Now game companies such as Electronic Arts are having to loosen their grip on pricing and are coming down on wholesale pricing because the market is slowly shifting to the game companies being able to sell the games directly to their customers with downloads. Many companies who sell games on Amazon and eBay are loss leaders, or having to compete with people who are acquiring the games from unknown sources (fell off of the back of a truck?).
At one point I was selling new titles on eBay And Amazon because they greatly boosted my shipping discounts. I could have about 40 pre-orders, and then about 500 sales on one title. The items are thin and low weight, so they are inexpensive for me to ship. If I sold 6 titles like this in a month, 3240 titles could decrease my cost of shipping for USPS First Class mail by 40%. I would lose maybe 10% in the actual sale of the games, which affects how much my business pays in taxes overall and I would get a large benefit of saving on shipping out 10,000+ items a month in competitive markets.
I have a close friend who owns a company called Video Games Etc which includes several stores, and he's about to start opening up video game rental stores to make up for the absence of closing Hollywood Video and Blockbuster Video stores whom rented out games leaving a tiny gap for game rentals in the market. - Which is good for him, because people are not buying older games like they used to.
