Look, living in the South Pacific i already pay far out the ass for videogames. This has already been established. See Resonance's blog for details

But there are ways to save some money like buying and trading second hand games.
Yeah, not so much at Ebgames. Here are a few examples of consumer butt raping. I wandered down to my local Ebgames, noticed that some sort of sale atomic bomb exploded in the front window




Inside i discovered:

Grand Theft Auto IV; did anyone buy this game?.



New $120NZD (90USD)
Second hand: $115NZD (87USD)


Lost Odyssey; wasn't my cup of tea but Jim liked it apparently.



New $99NZD (75USD)
Second hand, no manual: $79NZD (60USD)


The Simpsons; this was actually what i went in to look for (might be a renter though, no?).



New $120NZD (90USD)
Second hand, beat up case: $105NZD (on sale from $115) (79USD)


Lost Planet; the old one not the re-release:



New $110NZD (82USD)
Second hand, i'm pretty sure it was $95NZD (72USD) though could have been cheaper (i didn't write that one down)






Keep in mind that the average amount someone gets for trading in a new release game to Eb is $33USD. This is why i don't trade games into EB, it's a complete scam. I don't know what the guy who traded in gtaiv was thinking, it would have been easy enough for him to get at least $60USD for it on our version of ebay.

Also, i feel i should note I actually don't mind buying second hand games, it's just I'm not going to pay close to retail for used goods, especially when i know first hand EB has no quality control.

But i'm not naive, and at the end of the day fair enough to Eb they can charge what they want for their stuff if they think they can get it. Apparently they CAN get it too, because people will pay any amount of money for anything. I think consumers need to wise up a lot more to this sort of thing, then maybe EB won't get away with charging so much for 2nd hand goods.

Eb is not all bad, they do offer a Seven day money back guarantee so if a game is really terrible you can return it... and i did consider picking up Eternal Sonata on sale for $45usd, but then remembered i had testicles and decided against it.



Oh and to make matters worse for us NZ gamers... our Nintendo Distributor, Softprint has just gone out of business. So currently we have NO nz distributor of Nintendo products. Yay.





In summary: Wahhh, wahhh wahhh, wahhh.





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