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Lately, used video game retail has come under heavy industry scrutiny, some saying it is tearing apart the video gaming industry with the voracity consumers are trading in used games for new games at large corner specialty stores.
Video game publishers have a love/hate relationship with current used game retailers as they do a significant share of “new” game and console business but at the same time they often promote their sale of used video games first-and-foremost (over new games). Publishers feel they are being cheated out of revenue each time a used game is purchased in lieu of a new game and it is causing them to go great lengths to counter attack used game sales. Many of these counter attack measures (DLC, Online Pass, potential elimination of physical game media, etc.) ultimately are coming at the expense of the innocent consumers who just want to do what they have done since the dawn of the gaming industry some thirty-five plus years ago; that is buying, selling, trading and collecting physical game media in the form of cartridges, floppy disks and more recently game disks.
In order to complete a healthy “circle-of-life” for video games, a new online retailer wants to revolutionize “used” video game retail to benefit both consumers as well as the gaming industry. According to CEO Mike Kennedy, EKGaming.com can do what brick-and-mortar retailers cannot; that is to use its lower “online” overhead to give gamers higher trade-in credit while also sharing used game revenue with video game publishers. EKG plans on guaranteeing gamers 20-30% more for their trade-ins while sharing 10% of the used game selling prices with all publishers.
This could potentially send millions of dollars back to publisher’s pockets, and this is a good thing according to Kennedy, “Publishers are spending record amounts of cash on new game development. This increase in dev costs is steering them in directions that don’t necessarily jive with gamers, causing them to take less risks on new and potentially exciting IP’s or game mechanics and sticking with tried and true properties that are more of a guarantee. We want to share our used game revenue with them so they can continue investing in new gaming experiences without worrying about the negative effects used games could be having on their operation(s).”
EKG is currently up and running in Beta and is building its game inventory. Eventually, they hope to partner with a local big-box retailer to help facilitate local game trade-ins where gamers can drop off their games and have immediate access to new games, while the used games are funneled through their online marketplace, http://www.EKGaming.com.
