Hey, guys! Remember when GameStop used to sell legacy games and hardware? Atari, Genesis, you name it. Those were the days, before the company began swallowing up the competition and ditched the retro wares in favor of almost exclusively cramming used copies of week-old releases down your throat. Wouldn't you like to go back to those simpler days? Fat chance.
GameStop has added the Retro Game Vault to its PowerUp Rewards program, giving you the option to use points accrued through in-store purchases towards titles from the SNES, Dreamcast, PlayStation, NES, and more. When you think about it, it's quite similar from Club Nintendo's downloadable games initiative. Wait a minute... no, it's not. Whereas Club Nintendo software is priced at a reasonable 100 or 150 points, easily earned after a couple of retail purchases, Retro Game Vault software is priced like that sh*t is gold.
You earn 10 points per dollar spent on new games and consoles, 20 points per dollar spent on used goods, and 20 points per dollar earned on trade-ins. So if you were to buy two used Xbox 360 games at $40 a pop, for example, you would earn 800 points. Sounds like a decent chunk of change, right? How many points does a random game like, say, Double Dragon cost? 32,500. Let me repeat that: 32,500. So in other words, if you were trying to maximize points earned, you would have to spend $1625 on used merch, trade in the equivalent value, or apply some combination thereof. What. The. Hell.
Every so often, GameStop runs a special promotion where you can earn extra points on top of whatever transaction you make that day, but let's be real. Reaching the lofty point totals that GameStop has set for its retro catalog is no simple feat. The only people who could hope to earn enough points are the ones who live and die by GameStop's services, who trade in every damn game they ever buy as if GameStop was some glorified rental chain, or who are so loose with their money that they would gladly spend thousands upon thousands of dollars per year on games alone. Even then, because of the high point values of the Vault items, those people probably couldn't order more than two games anyway.
I haven't even talked about the selection yet! As of this moment, the only games available are Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon, and Quake III Arena for the Dreamcast. Everything else is either "sold out" or "coming soon." Double Dragon and Quake III are both 32,500 points, while Mario is 43,250. Of the unavailable games, the only one with a price tag is Sim City, and it's marked at 32,440. How on Earth is GameStop even arriving at these values?
Who is going to bend over backwards for a fuckin' loose copy of Mario when it can be found on eBay for the price of a family-size bag of Cheetos? And there doesn't seem to be any semblance of consistency when it comes to which games will be made available down the road. In all likelihood, these games are just the leftover shit from the earlier days, but instead of tossing them out, giving them away to employees, or -- God forbid -- selling them, GameStop opted to devise a ridiculous "incentive" program in the hopes that consumers would drive even more business to the store for the sake of "gifts" that could be acquired infinitely more easily and more cheaply anywhere else!
Seriously, fuck these guys.
Contest:
11:30 PM on 02.03.2012 | 
So that means they are charging 43 dollars for super mario bros. when you can literally play a flash version on any web browser for free.
that's absolutely beyond insane. That makes GameStop seem like a bunch of raving lunatics.
Problem solved.
Why bitch? Because this particular "service" doesn't reward ANYONE unless you can actually spend thousands of dollars on gaming gear or trade in that much.
Here's an apt comparison: you know ticket redemption arcade games, right? Put in a token, play a minute, earn tickets based on performance or luck. Then you trade those tickets in for prizes at the counter. On the top shelf are all the high-ticket items that no kid could ever hope to win, but at least there was the glass case full of 10-ticket to 100-ticket prizes that were easily obtainable.
This Game Vault is like a ticket redemption counter where the ONLY available prizes were the ones on the high shelf. Kids would be spending hours winning tickets, but it's ultimately a futile effort unless you have the patience and the deep pockets to play day after day, week after week. Then you finally get your Creepy Crawlers kit after spending who knows how much money when you could have easily gone to Toys 'R' Us and spent $30.
Gee, Tony, let's not cast judgement on how other people might live or anything. I doubt they do so to get Gamestop Rewards anyway.
I pretty much just amass points and then, once a year, blow it on T-Shirts if I can ever remember my password. You're getting ranty over games that aren't even worth getting and apparently wouldn't have even accrued enough points for one t-shirt. Big f'n deal.
Of course the corporate end of GS doesn't have a clue what they fuck their doing, they don't consult the actual gamers they employ. They barely give them enough hours per week to have more than one or two people in the store. Its a miracle people become assistant managers or manager st all.
I'm getting ranty over a shitty company that makes a token effort to "reward" its customers when actually it's doing nothing of the sort. This service of use to no one, but the fact that it exists means that GameStop believes that it will urge folks to frequent GameStop even more. I fail to see any incentive.
The one you could get on Ebay for a little less than 5 dollars?
Why is GameStop still relevant?
Ignore it and it will go away. Anyone who uses that stupid program deserves to be ripped off.
The NES and SNES games are easily available through other means like the Wii store and emulation. No one with half a brain would ever buy thousands of dollars of GS goods to redeem for fucking Double Dragon.
If that person exists, I want my fellow gamers to exterminate them ASAP.
Funny, I still have my old copy of Quake III: Arena. I might have to fire that bad boy up later.
Of course not, but the rewards are an incentive to continue patronage. Much like how Achievements are meant to add a little extra value to a game outside of the main activities.
Nonetheless, if you are a company and you're going to run a rewards program, you have to be reasonable about it. You can't make the ceiling so high that only the most dedicated of the dedicated can reap any benefits. Even then, the benefits should be reflected by the level of dedication. A LOOSE copy of Super Mario Bros. is hardly a proportional reward for transactions in the thousands of dollars. Either you make the points value much, much, much lower or you offer a reward of greater worth. Something like super limited edition consoles unavailable in stores, or some obscure piece of gaming memorabilia that is only available in limited quantities.
The Retro Game Vault is like a ticket redemption counter where the only prizes available are the glass case plastic spiders and Chinese finger traps, only they are marked at the high-shelf ticket values.
Christ, talk about making a big deal out of nothing.
I'm not disputing that these point values aren't ridiculous as all hell, but it's more the fact that its a free thing. Hell I have some friends who are managers at Gamestop, and customers aren't stupid, you'll get the dudebro guy looking up if his game is cheaper on Amazon. Gamestop's point thing is just a hook for people who absolutely can't resist free things on top of their purchases, and rely on word of mouth and general advertising to pull other people away from other retailers to shop more at Gamestop (obviously.) I don't see the need for quotes on the "s" word, but it wasn't there before and people bought games and other garbage fine, but now they can get something extra in the long run that doesn't have to aspire to the higher point items.
Sounds like Gamestop to me, though. The thinking is probably less "let's sell retro games!" and more "let's cash in on that reward points idea!" Seriously, it's just like Gamestop to overprice their shit, to deliver the best mediocre experience we can hope for.
I lost hope with them over a year ago.
Now they have something.
It's better than Best Buy's Reward Zone, which is the only real competetive offering. Everywhere else you buy games has literally nothing. You buy a game for $60 and walk out. This, I get a $10 off coupon every month or two.
::shrug::